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ESSAY 



ON THE 



CREATIVE IMAGINATION 



BY 

TH. RIBOT 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
BY 

AI.BKRT H. N. BARON 

FEIXOW IN OLABK UIOVEBSITT 



CHICAGO 
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd. 
1906 






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iBRARYof COHGi 

Two Copies Received 
SEP 18 1906 

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>)BLASS a, XXc.Ne. 

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copykight by 
The Open Court Publishing Co. 

CHICAGO, u. s. A. 

1906 
All rights reserved. 






3 9- 



To THE Memory op My Teacher 
AND Friend, 

Artlfur AUttt, J^ij. i.. 

PBOKESSOB OF PSYOHOLOGY Xmi EDUCATION, 
tTNIVBBSm OP COIK)BADO, 

who first interested me in the problems of psychology, 

this book is dedicated, with reverence 

and gratitude, by 

The Translator. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

The name of Th. Ribot has been for many years 
well known in America, and his works have gained 
wide popularity. The present translation of one 
of his more recent works is an attempt to render 
available in English what has been received as a 
classic exposition of a subject that is often dis- 
cussed, but rarely with any attempt to understand 
its true nature. 

It is quite generally recognized that psychology 
has remained in the semi-mythological, semi- 
scholastic period longer than most attempts at scien- 
tific formulization. For a long time it has been 
the "spook science" per se, and the imagination, now 
analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, 
has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, 
though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. 
Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of 
the imagination as an entity sui generis, as a lofty 
something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed 
"geniuses," constituting indeed the center of a cult, 
our author, Prometheus-like, has brought it down 
from the heavens, and has clearly shown that 
imagination is a function of mind common to all 



VI THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

men in some degree, and that it is shown in as 
highly developed form in commercial leaders and 
practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic 
idealists. The only difference is that the mani- 
festation is not the same. 

That this view is not entirely original with M. 
Ribot is not to his discredit — indeed, he does not 
claim any originality. We find the view clearly 
expressed elsewhere, certainly as early as Aristotle, 
that the greatest artist is he who actually embodies 
his vision and will in permanent form, preferably 
in social institutions. This idea is so clearly enun- 
ciated in the present monograph, which the author 
modestly styles an essay, that when the end of the 
book is reached but little remains of the great 
imagination-ghost, save the one great mystery un- 
derlying all facts of mind. 

That the present rendering falls far below the 
lucid French of the original, the translator is well 
aware ; he trusts, however, that the indulgent reader 
will take into account the good intent as offsetting 
in part, at least, the numerous shortcomings of this 
version. 

I wish here to express my obligation to those 
friends who encouraged me in the congenial task 
of translation. A. H. N. B. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

Contemporary psychology has studied the purely 
reproductive imagination with great eagerness and 
success. The works on the different image-groups 
— visual, auditory, tactile, motor — are known to 
everyone, and form a collection of inquiries solidly 
based on subjective and objective observation, on 
pathological facts and laboratory experiments. The 
study of the creative or constructive imagination, 
on the other hand, has been almost entirely neg- 
lected. It would be easy 'to show that the best, 
most complete, and most recent treatises on psy- 
chology devote to it scarcely a page or two; often, 
indeed, do not even mention it. A few articles, a 
few brief, scarce monographs, make up the sum of 
the past twenty-five years' work on the subject. 
The subject does not, however, at all deserve this 
indifferent or contemptuous attitude. Its impor- 
tance is unquestionable, and even though the study 
of the creative imagination has hitherto remained al- 
most inaccessible to experimentation strictly so- 
called, there are yet other objective processes that 
permit of our approaching it with some likelihood 
of success, and of continuing the work of former 



Viii THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

psychologists, but with methods better adapted to 
the requirements of contemporary thought. 

The present work is offered to the reader as an 
essay or first attempt only. It is not our intention 
here to undertake a complete monograph that would 
require a thick volume, but only to seek the under- 
lying conditions of the creative imagination, show- 
ing that it has its beginning and principal source in 
the natural tendency of images to become objecti- 
fied (or, more simply, in the motor elements in- 
herent in the image), and then following it in its 
development under its manifold forms, whatever 
they may be. For I cannot but maintain that, at 
present, the psychology of the imagination is con- 
cerned almost wholly with its part in esthetic crea- 
tion and in the sciences. We scarcely get beyond 
that ; its other manifestations have been occasionally 
mentioned — never investigated. Yet invention in 
the fine arts and in the sciences is only a special 
case, and possibly not the principal one. We hope 
to show that in practical life, in mechanical, mili- 
tary, industrial, and commercial inventions, in re- 
ligious, social, and political institutions, the human 
mind has expended and made permanent as much 
imagination as in all other fields. 

The constructive imagination is a faculty that in 
the course of ages has undergone a reduction — or 
at least, some profound changes. So, for reasons 
indicated later on, the mythic activity has been 
taken in this work as the central point of our topic, 
as the primitive and typical form out of which the 



AUTHOR S PREFACE. IX 

greater number of the others have arisen. The cre- 
ative power is there shown entirely unconfined, 
freed from all hindrance, careless of the possible 
and the impossible; in a pure state, unadulterated 
by the opposing influence of imitation, of ratiocina- 
tion, of the knowledge of natural laws and their 
uniformity. 

In the first or analytical part, we shall try to re- 
solve the constructive imagination into its constitu- 
tive factors, and study each of them singly. 

The second or genetic part will follow the imagin- 
ation in its development as a whole from the dim- 
mest to the most complex forms. 

Finally, the third or concrete part, will be no 
longer devoted to the imagination, but to imagin- 
ative beings, to the principal types of imagination 
that observation shows us. 

May, 1900. 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Translator 's Preface v 

Author 's Preface vii 

INTEODUCTION. 

THE MOTOR NATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION. 

Transition from the reproductive to the creative imagina- 
tion. — Do all representations contain motor elements? 
— Unusual effects produced by images: vesication, 
stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our sub- 
ject. — The imagination is, on the intellectual side, 
equivalent to will. Proof: Identity of development; 
subjective, personal character of both; teleologic char- 
acter; analogy between the abortive forms of the 
imagination and abulias 3 

FIKST PAET. 

ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION. 

CHAPTEE I. 

THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 

Dissociation, preparatory work. — Dissociation in complete, 
incomplete and schematic images. — Dissociation in 
series. Its principal causes: internal or subjective, 
external or objective. — Association: its role reduced 
to a single question, the formation of new combina- 
tions. — The principal intellectual factor is thinking by 
xi 



Xll THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

PAGE 
analogy. Why it is an almost inexhaustible source of 
creation. Its mechanism. Its processes reducible to 
two, viz. : personification, transformation 15 

CHAPTER II. 

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 

The great importance of this element. — All forms of the 
creative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs: 
All affective conditions may influence the imagination. 
Proofs: Association of ideas on an emotional basis; 
new combinations under ordinary and extraordinary 
forms. — Association by contrast. — The motor element 
in tendencies. — There is no creative instinct; inven- 
tion has not a source, but sources, and always arises 
from a need. — The work of the imagination reduced 
to two great classes, themselves reducible to special 
needs. — Reasons for the prejudice in favor of a crea- 
tive instinct 31 

CHAPTER III. 

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 

Various views of the ' ' inspired state. ' ' Its essential char- 
acteristics; suddenness, impersonality. — Its relations 
to unconscious activity.— Resemblances tO' hypermne- 
sia, the initial state of alcoholic intoxication and 
somnambulism on waking. — ^Disagreements concerning 
the ultimate nature of unconsciousness: two hypoth- 
eses. — The ''inspired state" is not a cause, but an 
index. — Associations in unconscious form. — Mediate or 
latent association: recent experiments and discussions 
on this subject. — '* Constellation " the result of a 
summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism 50 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION. 

Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of 
the question. Flechsig's theory. — Physiological con- 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll 

PAGE 
ditions: are thej cause, effect, or accompaniment? 
Chief factor: change in cerebral and local circulation. 
— ^Attempts at experimentation. — The oddities of in- 
ventors brought under two heads: the explicable and 
inexplicable. They are helpers of inspiration. — Is 
there any analogy between physical and psychic crea- 
tion? A philosophical hypothesis on the subject. — 
Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an exact 
answer 65 

CHAPTEE V. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 

Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea 
or a fixed emotion. — Their equivalence. — Distinction 
between the synthetic principle and the ideal, which 
is the principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a con- 
struction in images, merely outlined. — The principal 
forms of the unifying principles: unstable, organic or 
middle, extreme or semi-morbid. — Obsession of the in- 
ventor and the sick: insufficiency of a purely psycho- 
logical criterion 79 



SECOND PAET. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. 

CHAPTEE I. 

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS. 

Difficulties of the subject. — The degree of imagination in 
animals. — ^Does creative synthesis exist in them? 
Affirmation and denials. — The special form of animal 
imagination is motor, and shows itself through play: 
its numerous varieties. — Why the animal imagination 
must be above all motor: lack of intellectual develop- 
ment. — Comparison with young children, in whom the 
motor system predominates : the roles of movements in 
infantile insanity 93 



XIV THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

PAGE 
CHAPTEE II. 

IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. 

Division of its deTelopment into four principal periods. — 
Transition from passive to creative imagination: per- 
ception and illusion. — Animating everything: analysis 
of the elements constituting this moment: the r6le of 
belief. — Creation in play: period of imitation, at- 
tempts at invention. — Fanciful invention 103 

CHAPTER III. 

PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS. 

The golden age of the creative imagination. — Myths: 
hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho- 
physical objectification of man in the phenomena that 
he perceives. The role of imagination. — How myths 
are formed. The moment of creation : two operations — 
animating everything, qualifying everything. Eoman- 
ti2 imention lacking in peoples without imagination. 
The role of analogy and of association through 
' ' constellation. ' ' — The evolution of myths : ascension, 
acme, decline. — The explanatory myths undergo a rad- 
ical transformation: the work of depersonification of 
the myth. Survivals. — The non-explanatory myths 
suffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallen 
and rationalized mythology. — Popular imagination 
and legends: the legend is to the myth what illusion 
is to hallucination. — Unconscious processes that the 
imagination employs in order to create legends: 
fusion, idealization 118 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 

Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological 
and physiological theories of genius. — General charac- 
ters of great inventors. Precocity: chronological order 
of the development of the creative power. Psycholog- 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 
ieal reasons for this order. Why the creator com- 
mences hj imitating. — Necessity or fatalism of voca- 
tion. — The representative character of great creators. 
Discussion as to the origin of this character — is it in 
the individual or in the environment? — Mechanism of 
creation. Two principal processes — complete, abridged. 
Their three phases ; their resemblances and differences. 
— The role of chance in invention: it supposes the 
meeting of two factors — one internal, the other ex- 
ternal. — Chance is an occasion for, not an agent of, 
creation 140 

CHAPTEE V. 

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. 

Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to 
any law! — It passes through two staged separated by 
a critical phase. — Period of autonomy ; critical period ; 
period of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or 
transformation through logical form, through devia- 
tion. — Subsidiary law of increasing complexity. — His- 
torical verification 167 



THIED PAET. 

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION. 

PRELIMINARY. 

The need of a concrete study. — The varieties of the crea- 
tive imagination, analogous to the varieties of char- 
acter 179 

CHAPTEE I. 

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION. 

It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, 
and of associations of objective relations. — Its exter- 
nal character. — Inferiority of the affective element. 
— Its principal manifestations: in the arts dealing 



XVI THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

PAGE 
with form; in poetry (transformation of sonorous into 
visual images); in myths with clear outline; in me- 
chanical invention. — The dry and rational imagina- 
tion its elements 184 



CHAPTER II. 

THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 

It makes use of vague images linked according to the 
least rigorous modes of association. Emotional ab- 
stractions; their nature. — Its characteristic of inward- 
ness. — Its principal manifestations: revery, the ro- 
mantic spirit, the chimerical spirit; myths and reli- 
gious conceptions, literature and the fine arts (the 
symbolists), the class of the marvelous and fantastic. 
— Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first, numer- 
ical imagination; its nature; two principal forms, 
cosmogonic and scientific conceptions; second, musical 
imagination, the type of the affective imagination. 
Its characteristics; it does not develop save after an 
interval of time. — Natural transposition of events in 
musicians. — Antagonism between true musical imag- 
ination and plastic imagination. Inquiry and facts 
on the subject. — Two great types of imagination 195 

CHAPTEE III. 

MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 

Its elements; its special characteristics. — Thinking sym- 
bolically. — Nature of this symbolism. — The mystic 
changes concrete images into symbolic images. — Their 
obscurity; whence it arises. — Extraordinary abuse of 
analogy. — Mystic labor on letters, numbers, etc. — 
Nature and extent of the belief accompanying this 
form of imagination: it is unconditional and perma- 
nent. — The mystic conception of the world a general 
symbolism. — Mystic imagination in religion and in 
metaphysics 221 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XVll 

PAGE 
CHAPTEE IV. 

THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 

It is distinguishable into genera and species. — The need 
for monographs that have not yet appeared. — The 
imagination in growing sciences — belief is at its 
maximum; in the organized sciences — the negative 
r6le of method. — The conjectural phase; proof of its 
importance. — Abortive and dethroned hypotheses. — 
The imagination in the processes of verification. — The 
metaphysician's imagination arises from the same 
need as the scientist's. — Metaphysics is a rationalized 
myth. — Three moments. — Imaginative and rationalist. 236 

CHAPTEE V. 

THE PRACTICAL AND MECHANICAL IMAGINATION. 

Indetermination of this imaginative form. — Inferior 
forms: the industrious, the unstable, the eccentric. 
Why people of lively imagination are changeable. — 
Superstitious beliefs. Origin of this form of imag- 
ination — its mental mechanism and its elements. — The 
higher form — mechanical imagination. — Man has ex- 
pended at least as much imagination there as in 
esthetic creation. — "Why the contrary view prevails. — 
Eesemblances between these two forms of imagina- 
tion. — Identity of development. Detail observation — 
four phases. — General characters. This form, at its 
best, supposes inspiration; periods of preparation, 
of maturity, and of decline. — Special characters: 
invention occurs in layers. Principal steps of its 
development. — It depends strictly on physical condi- 
tions. — ^A phase of pure imagination — mechanical 
romances. Examples. — Identical nature of the imag- 
ination of the mechanic and that of the artist 256 

CHAPTEE VI. 

THE COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 

Its internal and external conditions. — Two classes of 
creators — the cautious, the daring. — The initial mo- 



^ 



XVlll THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

PAGE 

ment of invention. — The importance of the intuitive 
mind. — Hypotheses in regard to its psychologic 
nature. — Its development: the creation of increasingly 
more simple processes of substitution. — Characters in 
common with the forms of creation already studied. 
— Characters peculiar to it — the combining imagina- 
tion of the tactician; it is a form of war. — Creative 
intoxication. — Exclusive use of schematic representa- 
tions. — Remarks on the various types of images. — 
The creators of great financial systems. — Brief re- 
marks on the military imagination 281 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 

Successive appearances of ideal conceptions. — Creators in 
ethics and in the social realm. — Chimerical forms. 
Social novelists. — Ch. Fourrier, type of the great 
imaginer. — Practical invention — the collective ideal. 
— Imaginative regression 299 

CONCLUSION. 

I. The foundations of the creative imagination. 

Why man is able to create: two principal conditions. — 
''Creative spontaneity," which resolves itself into 
needs, tendencies, desires. — Every imaginative crea- 
tion has a motor origin. — The spontaneous revival of 
images.- -The creative imagination reduced to three 
forms: outlined, fixed, objectified. Their peculiar 
characteristics 313 

II. The imaginative type. 

A view of the imaginative life in all its stages. — Reduc- 
tion to a psychologic law. — Four stages characterized: 
1, by the quantity of images; 2, by their quantity 
and intensity; 3, by quantity, intensity and duration; 
4, by the complete and permanent systematization 
of the imaginary life. — Summary 320 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX 

PAGE 
APPENDICES. 

OBSERVATIONS AND DOCUMENTS. 

A. The various forms of inspiration 335 

B. On the nature of the unconscious factor. Two cate- 
gories — static unconscious, dynamic unconscious. — 
Theories as to the nature of the unconscious. — Objec- 
tions, criticisms 338 

C. Cosmic and human imagination 346 

D. Evidence in regard to musical imagination 350 

E. The imaginative type and association of ideas 353 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 

The Motor Nature of the Constructive 
Imagination 



It has been often repeated that one of the prin- 
cipal conquests of contemporary psychology is the 
fact that it has firmly established the place ard 
importance of movements; that it has especially 
through observation and experiment shown the rep- 
resentation of a movement to be a movement be- 
gun, a movement in the nascent state. Yet those 
who have most strenuously insisted on this propo- 
sition have hardly gone beyond the realm of the 
passive imagination; they have clung tO' facts of 
pure reproduction. My aim is 'to extend their 
formula, and to show that it explains, in large 
measure at least, the origin of the creative imagina- 
tion. 

Let us follow step by step the passage from repro- 
duction pure and simple to the creative stage, show- 
ing therein the persistence and preponderance of the 
motor element in proportion as we rise from mere 
repetition to invention. 

First of all, do all representations include motor 



4 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

elements? Yes, I say, because every perception 
presupposes movements to some extent, and repre- 
sentations are the remnants of past perceptions. 
Certain it is that, without our examining the ques- 
tion in detail, this statement holds good for the 
great majority of cases. So far as visual and tactile 
images are concerned there is no possible doubt as 
to the importance of the motor elements that enter 
into their composition. The eye is very poorly en- 
dowed with movements for its office as a higher 
sense-organ ; but if we take into account its intimate 
connection with the vocal organs, so rich in capacity 
for motor combinations, we note a kind of com- 
pensation. Smell and taste, secondary in human 
psychology, rise to a very high rank indeed among 
many animals, and the .olfactory apparatus thus ob- 
tains with them a complexity of movements propor- 
tionate to its importance, and one that at times 
approaches that of sight. There yet remains the 
group of internal sensations that might cause dis- 
cussion. Setting aside the fact that the vague im- 
pressions bound up with chemical changes within 
the tissues are scarcely factors in representation, we 
find that the sensations resulting from changes in 
respiration, circulation, and digestion are not lack- 
ing in motor elements. The mere fact that, in 
some persons, vomiting, hiccoughs, micturition, etc., 
can be caused by perceptions of sight or of hearing 
proves that representations of this character have 
a tendency to become translated into acts. 

Without emphasizing the matter we may, then, 



INTRODUCTION. ■ 5 

say that this thesis rests on a weighty mass of facts ; 
that the motor element of the image tends to cause 
it to lose its purely "inner" character, to objectify 
it, to externalize it, to project it outside of our- 
selves. 

It should, however, be noted that what has just 
been said does not take us beyond the reproductive 
imagination — beyond memory. All these revived 
images are repetitions; but the creative imagination 
requires something new — this is its peculiar and es- 
sential mark. In order to grasp the transition from 
reproduction to production, from repetition to crea- 
tion, it is necessary to consider other, more rare, 
and more extraordinary facts, found only among 
some favored beings. These facts, known for a 
long time, surrounded with some mystery, and at- 
tributed in a vague manner "to the power of the 
imagination," have been studied in our own day 
with much more system and exactness. For ooir 
purpose we need to recall only a few of them. 

Many instances have been reported of tingling 
or of pains that may appear in different parts of the 
body solely through the effect of the imagination. 
Certain people can increase or inhibit the beating of 
their hearts at will, i. c, by means of an intense 
and persistent representation. The renowned physi- 
ologist, E. F. Weber, possessed this power, and has 
described the mechanism of the phenomenon. Still 
more remarkable are the cases of vesication pro- 
duced in hypnotized subjects by means of sugges- 
tion. Finally, let us recall the persistent story of 



6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the stigmatized individuals, who, from the thirteenth 
century dowii to our own day, have been quite 
numerous and present some interesting varieties — 
some having only the mark of the crucifix, others 
of the scourging, or of the crown of thorns.^ Let 
us add the profound changes of the organism, re- 
sults of the suggestive therapeutics of contempo- 
raries ; the wonderful effects of the ''faith cure," i. e., 
the miracles of all religions in all times and in all 
places ; and this brief list will suffice to recall certain 
creative activities of the human imagination that we 
have a tendency to forget. 

It is proper to add that the image acts not alto- 
gether in a positive manner. Sometimes it has an 
inhibitory power. A vivid representation of a 
movement arrested is the beginning of the stoppage 
of that movement; it may even end in complete 
arrest of the movement. Such are the cases of 
"paralysis by ideas" first described by Reynolds, 
and later by Charcot and his school under the name 
of ''psychic paralysis." The patient's inward con- 
viction that he cannot move a limb renders him 
powerless for any movement, and he recovers his 
motor powder only when the morbid representation 
has disappeared. 

These and similar facts suggest a few remarks. 

First, that we have here creation in the strict 
sense of the word, though it be limited to the or- 
ganism. What appears <is new. Though one may 

* A. Maury, in his book L 'Astronomie et la Magie, enumerates 
fifty cases. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Strictly maintain that from our own experience we 
have a knowledge of formication, rapid and slow 
beating of the heart, even though we may not be 
able ordinarily to produce them at will, this position 
is absolutely untenable when we consider cases of 
vesication, stigmata, and other alleged miraculous 
phenomena : these are without precedent in the life 
of the individual. 

Second, in order that these unusual states may 
occur, there are required additional elements in the 
producing mechanism. At bottom this mechanism 
is very obscure. To invoke "the power of the 
imagination" is merely to substitute a word where 
an explanation is needed. Fortunately, we do not 
need to penetrate into the inmost part of this mys- 
tery. It is enough for us to make sure of the 
facts, to prove that they have a representation as 
the starting point, and to show that the representa- 
tion by itself is not enough. What more then is 
needed? Let us note first of all that these occur- 
rences are rare. It is not within the power of every- 
body to acquire stigmata or to become cured of a 
paralysis pronounced incurable. This happens only 
to those having an ardent faith, a strong desire 
that it shall come to pass. This is an indispensable 
psychic condition. What is concerned in such a 
case is not a single state, but a double one: an 
image followed by a particular emotional state (de- 
sire, aversion, etc. ) . In other words, there are two 
conditions : In the first are concerned the motor 
elements included in the image, the remains of pre- 



8 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

vious percqDtions ; in the second, there are concerned 
the foregoing, plus affective states, tendencies that 
sum up the individual's energy. It is the latter fact 
that explains their power. 

To conclude : This group of facts shows us the 
existence, beyond images, of another factor, in- 
stinctive or emotional in form, which we shall have 
to study later and which will lead us to the ultimate 
source of the creative imagination. 

I fear that the distance between the facts here 
given and the creative imagination proper will seem 
to the reader very great indeed. And why so? 
First, because the creative activity here has as its 
only material the organism, and is not separated 
from the creator. Then, too, because these facts 
are extremely simple, and the creative imagination, 
in the ordinary sense, is extremely complex; here 
there is one operating cause, a single representation 
more or less complex, while in imaginative creation 
we have several co-operating images with comr 
binations, coordination, arrangement, grouping. 
But it must not be forgotten that our present aim 
is simply to find a transition stage^ between repro- 
duction and production ; to show the common origin 
of the two forms of imagination — the purely repre- 
sentative faculty and the faculty of creating by 
means of the intermediation of images; — and to 
show at the same time the work of separation, of 
severance between the two. 

* There are still others, as we shall see later on. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

II 

Since the chief aim of this study is to prove that 
the basis of invention must be sought in motor mani- 
festations, I shall not hesitate to dwell on it, and 
I take the subject up again under another, clearer, 
more precise, and more psychological form, in put- 
ting the following question : Which one among the 
various modes of mind-activity offers the closest 
analogy to the creative imagination? I unhesita- 
tingly answer, voluntary activity : Imagination, in 
the intellectual order, is the equivalent of will in the 
realm of movements. Let us justify this compari- 
son by some proof. 

I. Likeness of development in the two instances. 
Growth of voluntary control is progressive, slow, 
crossed and checked. The individual has to become 
master of his muscles and by their agency extend 
his sway over other things. Reflexes, instinctive 
movements, and movements expressive of emotion 
constitute the primary material of voluntary move- 
ments. The will has no movements of its own as 
an inheritance: it must coordinate and associate, 
since it separates in order to form new associations. 
It reigns by right of conquest, not by right of birth. 
In like manner, the creative imagination docs not 
rise completely armed. Its raw materials are 
images, which here correspond to muscular move- 
ments. It goes through a period of trial. It al- 
ways is, at the start ( for reasons indicated later on) , 
an imitation; it attains its complex forms only 
through a process of growth. 



10 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

2. But this first comparison does not go to the 
bottom of the matter ; there are yet deeper analogies. 
First, the completely subjective character of both 
instances. The imagination is subjective, personal, 
jnthropocentric ; its movement is from within out- 
wards toward an objectification. The understand- 
ing, i. c, the intellect in the restricted sense, has 
opposite characteristics — it is objective, impersonal, 
receives from outside. For the creative imagination 
the inner world is the regulator; there is a pre- 
ponderance of the inner over the outer. For the 
understanding, the outside world is the regulator; 
there is a preponderance of the outer over the inner. 
The world of my imagination is my world as op- 
posed to the world of my understanding, which is 
the world of all my fellow creatures. On the other 
hand, as regards the will, we might repeat exactly, 
word for word, what we have just said of the 
imagination. This is unnecessary. Back of both, 
then, we have our true cause, whatever may be our 
opinion concerning the ultimate nature of causation 
and of will. 

3. Both imagination and will have a teleological 
character, and act only with a view toward an end, 
being thus the opposite of the understanding, which, 
as such, limits itself to proof. We are always 
wanting something, be it worthless or important. 
We are always inventing for an end — whether in 
the case of a Napoleon imagining a plan of cam- 
paign, or a cook making up a new dish. In both 
instances there is now a simple end attained by im- 



INTRODUCTION. II 

mediate means, now a complex and distant goal pre- 
supposing subordinate ends which are means in rela- 
tion to the final end. In both cases there is a vis a 
tergo designated by the vague term ^'spontaneity," 
which we shall attempt to make clear later, and a 
vis a f route, an attracting movement. 

4. Added to this analogy as regards their nature, 
there are other, secondary likenesses between the 
abortive forms of the creative imagination and the 
impotent forms of the will. In its normal and 
complete form will culminates in an act; but with 
wavering characters and sufferers from abulia de- 
liberation never ends, or the resolution remains in- 
ert, incapable of realization, of asserting itself in 
practice. The creative imagination also, in its com- 
plete form, has a tendency to become objectified, to 
assert itself in a work that shall exist not only for 
the creator but for everybody. On the contrary, 
with dreamers pure and simple, the imagination re- 
mains a vaguely sketched inner affair; it is not em- 
bodied in any esthetic or practical invention. Rev- 
ery is the equivalent of weak desires; dreamers are 
the abulics of the creative imagination. 

It is unnecessary to add that the similarity estab- 
lished here between the will and the imagination is 
only partial and has as its aim only to bring to light 
the role of the motor elements. Surely no one will 
confuse two aspects of our psychic life that are so 
distinct, and it would be foolish to delay in order 
to enumerate the differences. The characteristic of 
novelty should by itself suffice, since it is the special 



12 THE CREATI\^ IMAGINATION. 

and indispensable mark of invention, and for voli- 
tion is only accessory: The extraction of a tooth 
requires of the patient as much effort the second 
time as the first, although it is no longer a novelty. 
After these preliminary remarks we must go on 
to the analysis of the creative imagination, in order 
to understand its nature in so far as that is acces- 
sible with our existing means. It is, indeed, a ter- 
tiary formation in mental life, if we assume a pri- 
mary layer (sensations and simple emotions), and 
a secondary (images and their associations, certain 
elementary logical operations, etc.). Being com- 
posite, it may be decomposed into its constituent ele- 
ments, which we shall study under these three head- 
ings, viz., the intellectual factor, the affective or 
emotional factor, and the unconscious factor. But 
that is not enough ; the analysis should be completed 
by a synthesis. All imaginative creation, great or 
small, is organic, requires a unifying principle : there 
is then also a synthetic factor, which it will be neces- 
sary to determine. 



PART ONE 
ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION 



CHAPTER I 

THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 



Considered under its intellectual aspect, that is, 
in so far as it borrows its elements from the under- 
standing, the imagination presupposes two funda- 
mental operations — the one, negative and prepara- 
tory, dissociation; the other, positive and constitu- 
tive, association. 

Dissociation is the "abstraction" of the older psy- 
chologists, who well understood its importance for 
the subject with which we are now concerned. 
Nevertheless, the term "dissociation" seems to me 
preferable, because it is more comprehensive. It 
designates a genus of which the other is a species. 
It is a spontaneous operation and of a more radical 
nature than the other. Abstraction, strictly so- 
called, acts only on isolated states of consciousness ; 
dissociation acts, further, on series of states of con- 
sciousness, which it sorts out, breaks up, dissolves, 
and through this preparatory work makes suitable 
for entering into new combinations. 

Perception is a synthetic process, but dissociation 
(or abstraction) is already present in embryo in 



l6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

perception, just because the latter is a complex state. 
Everyone perceives after an individual fashion, ac- 
cording to his constitution and the impression of the 
moment. A painter, a sportsman, a dealer, and an 
uninterested spectator do not see a given horse in 
the same manner : the qualities that interest one are 
unnoticed by another.^ 

The image being a simplification of sensory data, 
and its nature dependent on that of previous per- 
ceptions, it is inevitable that the work of dissocia- 
tion should go on in it. But this is far too mild 
a statement. Observation and experiment show us 
that in the majority of cases the process grows won- 
derfully. In order to follow the progressive de- 
velopment of this dissolution, we may roughly dif- 
ferentiate images into three categories — complete, 
incomplete, and schematic — and study them in 
order. 

The group of images here termed complete com- 
prises first, objects repeatedly presented in daily 
experience — my wife's face, my inkstand, the sound 
of a church bell or of a neighboring clock, etc. In 
this class are also included the images of things that 
we have perceived but a few times, but which, for 
additional reasons, have remained clean-cut in our 
memory. Are these images complete, in the strict 
sense of the word? They cannot be; and the con- 
trary belief is a delusion of consciousness that, how- 
ever, disappears when one confronts it with the 

* Cf . the well-known aphorism, * ' Apperception ist alles. ' * 
(Tr.) 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. Ij 

reality. The mental image can contain all the quali- 
ties of an object in even less degree than the per- 
ception; the image is the result of selection, vary- 
ing with every case. The painter Fromentin, who 
was proud that he found after two or three years 
"an exact recollection" of things he had barely 
noticed on a journey, makes elsewhere, however, 
the following confession : "My memory of things, 
although very faithful, has never the certainty ad- 
missible as documentary evidence. The weaker it 
grows, the more is it changed in becoming the prop- 
erty of my memory and the more valuable is it for 
the work that I intend for it. In proportion as the 
exact form becomes altered, another form, partly 
real, partly imaginary, which I believe preferable, 
takes its place." Note that the person speaking thus 
is a painter endowed with an unusual visual mem- 
ory; but recent investigations have shown that 
among men generally the so-called complete and 
exact images undergo change and warping. One 
sees the truth of this statement when, after a lapse 
of some time, one is placed in the presence of the^ 
original object, so that comparison between the real 
object and its image becomes possible.^ Let us 
note that in this group the image always corresponds 

* See especially J, Philippe, ' * La deformation et les transfor- 
mations des images ' ' in Eevue PMlosopMque, May and Novem- 
ber, 1897. Although these investigations had in view only 
visual representations, it is not at all doubtful that the results 
hold good for others, especially those of hearing (voice, song, 
harmony). 



l8 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

to certain individual objects; it is not the same with 
the other two groups. 

The group of incomplete images, according to 
the testimony of consciousness itself, comes from 
two distinct sources — first, from perceptions insuffi- 
ciently or ill-fixed; and again, from impressions of 
like objects which, when too often repeated, end 
by becoming confused. The latter case has been 
well described by Taine. A man, says he, who, 
having gone through an avenue of poplars wants 
to picture a poplar ; or, having looked into a poultry- 
yard, wishes to call up a picture of a hen, expe- 
riences a difficulty — his different memories rise up. 
The experiment becomes a cause of effacement ; the 
images canceling one another decline to a state of 
imperceptible tendencies which their likeness and 
unlikeness prevent from predominating. Images 
become blunted by their collision just as do bodies 
by friction.^ 

This group leads us to that of schematic images, 
or those entirely without mark — the indefinite image 
of a rosebush, of a pin, of a cigarette, etc. This is 
the greatest degree of impoverishment; the image, 
deprived little by little of its own characteristics, 
is nothing more than a shadow. It has become that 
transitional form between image and pure concept 
that we now term "generic image,'' or one that at 
least resembles the latter. 

The image, then, is subject to an unending process 
of change, of suppression and addition, of dissocia,- 

' On Intelligence, Vol. I, Bk. ii, Chap. 2. 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. I9 

tion and corrosion. This means that it is not a 
dead thing; it is not at all like a photographic plate 
with which one may reproduce copies indefinitely. 
Being dependent on the state of the brain, the image 
undergoes change like all living substance, — it is 
subject to gains and losses, especially losses. But 
each of the foregoing three classes has its use for 
the inventor. They serve as material for different 
kinds of imagination — in their concrete form, for 
the mechanic and the artist; in their schematic form, 
for the scientist and for others. 

Thus far we have seen only a part of the work of 
dissociation and, taking it all in all, the smallest 
part. We have, seemingly, considered images as 
isolated facts, as psychic atoms; but that is a 
purely theoretic position. Images are not solitary 
in actual life; they form part of a chain, or rather 
of a woof or net, since, by reason of their manifold 
relations they may radiate in all directions, through 
all the senses. Dissociation, then, works also upon 
series, cuts them up, mangles them, breaks them, 
and reduces them to ruins. 

The ideal law of the recurrence of images is that 
known since Hamilton's time under the name of 
"law of redintegration,"^ which consists in the pass- 

*In his recent history of the theories of the imagination, 
La psicologia delV immaginazione, nella storia filosofia (Eome, 
1898) Ambrosi shows that this law is found already formulated 
in the Tsychologia Empirica of Christian Wolff [d. 1754] :. 
^'Perceptio prcsterita Integra recurrit cujus prcesens continet 
partem. ' ' 



20 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ing from a part to the whole, each element tending 
to reproduce the complete state, each member of a 
series the whole of that series. If this law existed 
alone, invention would be forever forbidden to us; 
we could not emerge from repetition ; we should be 
condemned to monotony. But there is an opposite 
power that frees us — it is dissociation. 

It is very strange that, while psychologists have 
for so long a time studied the laws of association, 
no one has investigated whether the inverse process, 
dissociation, also has not laws of its own. We 
can not here attempt such a task, which would be 
outside of our province ; it will suffice to indicate in 
passing two general conditions determining the asso- 
ciation of series. 

First, there are the internal or subjective causes. 
The revived image of a face, a monument, a land- 
scape, an occurrence, is, most often, only partial. 
It depends on various conditions that revive the 
essential part and drop the minor details, and this 
"essential" which survives dissociation depends on 
subjective causes, the principal ones of which are 
at first practical, utilitarian reasons. It is the ten- 
dency already mentioned to ignore what is of no 
value, to exclude that from consciousness. Helm- 
holtz has shown that in the act of seeing, various 
details remain unnoticed because they are imma- 
terial in the concerns of life; and there are many 
other like instances. Then, too, emotional reasons 
governing the attention orientate it exclusively in 
one direction — these will be studied in the course 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 21 

of this work. Lastly, there are logical or intellec- 
tual reasons, if we understand by this term the law 
of mental inertia or the law of least resistance by 
means of which the mind tends toward the simpli- 
fication and lightening of its labor. 

Secondly, there are external or objective causes 
which are variations in experience. When two or 
more qualities or events are given as constantly as- 
sociated in experience we do not dissociate them. 
The uniformity of nature's laws is the great oppo- 
nent of dissociation. Many truths (for example, 
the existence of the antipodes) are established with 
difficulty, because it is necessary to break up closely 
knit associations. The oriental king whom Sully 
mentions, who had never seen ice, refused to credit 
the existence of solid water. A total impression, 
the elements of which had never been given us sep- 
arately in experience, would be unanalyzable. If 
all cold objects were moist, and all moist objects 
cold; if all liquids were transparent and all non- 
liquids opaque, we should find it difficult to dis- 
tinguish cold from moisture and liquidity from 
transparency. On his part, James adds further 
that what has been associated sometimes with 
one thing and sometimes with another tends to 
become dissociated from both. This might be 
called a law of association by concomitant varia- 
tions.^ 

In order to thoroughly comprehend the absolute 
necessity for dissociation, let us note that total 

* Sully, Human Mind, I, p. 365 ; James, Psychology, I, p. 502. 



22 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

redintegration is per se a hindrance to creation. Ex- 
amples are given of people who can easily remember 
twenty or thirty pages of a book, but if they want 
a particular passage they are unable to pick it out — 
they must begin at the beginning and continue down 
to the required place. Excessive ease of retention 
thus becomes a serious inconvenience. Besides these 
rare cases, we know that ignorant people, those intel- 
lectually limited, give the same invariable story of 
every occurrence, in which all the parts — the impor- 
tant and the accessory, the useful and the useless — 
are on a dead level. They omit no detail, they cannot 
select. Minds of this kind are inapt at invention. In 
short, we may say that there are two kinds of mem- 
ory: one is completely systematized, e. g., habits, 
routine, poetry or prose learned by heart, faultless 
musical rendering, etc. The acquisition forms a com- 
pact whole and cannot enter into new combinations. 
The other is not systematized; it is composed of 
small, more or less coherent groups. This kind of 
memory is plastic and capable of becoming com- 
bined in new ways. 

We have enumerated the spontaneous, natural 
causes of association, omitting the voluntary and 
artificial causes, which are but their imitations. As 
a result of these various causes, images are taken 
to pieces, shattered, broken up, but made all the 
readier as materials for the inventor. This is a 
process analogous to that which, in geologic time, 
produces new strata through the wearing away of 
old rocks. 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 23 

II 

Association is one of the big questions of psy- 
chology; but as it does not especially concern our 
subject, it will be discussed in strict proportion to 
its use here. Nothing is easier than limiting our- 
selves. Our task is reducible tO' a very clear and 
very brief question: What are the forms of asso-. 
ciation that give rise to new combinations and. 
under what influences do they arise? All other 
forms of association, those that are only repetitions, 
should be eliminated. Consequently, this subject" 
can not be treated in one single effort; it must be 
studied, in turn, in its relations to our three factors ^ 
— intellectual, emotional, unconscious. 

It is generally admitted that the expression "as- 
sociation of ideas" is faulty.^ It is not compre- 
hensive enough, association being active also in 
psychic states other than ideas. It seems indicative 
rather of mere juxtaposition, whereas associated 
states modify one another by the very fact of their^ 
being connected. But, as it has been confirmed by 
long usage, it would be difficult to eliminate the 
phrase. 

On the other hand, psychologists are not at all 
agreed as regards the determination of the principal ' 
laws or forms of association. Without taking sides 
in the debate, I adopt the most generally accepted 
classification, the one most suitable for our subject 
— the one that reduces everything to the two funda- 

* For a good criticism of the term, consult Titchener, OviX- 
lines of Phychology (New York, 1896), p. 190. 



24 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

mental laws of contiguity and resemblance. In 
recent years various attempts have been made to 
reduce these two laws to one, some reducing re- 
semblance to contiguity; others, contiguity to re- 
semblance. Putting aside the ground of this dis- 
cussion, which seems to me very useless, and which 
perhaps is due to excessive zeal for unity, we must 
nevertheless recognize that this discussion is not 
without interest for the study of the creative imagin- 
ation, because it has well shown that each of the 
two fundamental laws has a characteristic mechan- 
ism. 

Association by contiguity (or continuity), which 
Wundt calls external, is simple and homogeneous. 
It reproduces the order and connection of things; 
it reduces itself to habits contracted by our nervous 
system. 

Is association by resemblance, which Wundt calls 
internal, strictly speaking, an elementary law? 
Many doubt it. Without entering into the long 
and frequently confused discussions to which this 
subject has given rise, we may surn up their re- 
sults as follows: In so-called association by re- 
semblance it is necessary to distinguish three mo- 
ments — (a) That of the presentation; a state A is 
given in perception or association-by-contiguity, and 
forms the starting point, (b) That of the work of 
assimilation ; A is recognized as more or less like ai 
state a previously experienced, (c) As a conse- ' 
quence of the coexistence of A and a in conscious- 
ness, they can later be recalled reciprocally, although 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 2$ 

the two original occurrences A and a have pre- 
viously never existed together, and sometimes, in- 
deed, may not possibly have existed together. It 
is evident that the crucial moment is the second, and 
that it consists of an act of active assimilation. 
Thus James maintains that "it is a relation that the 
mind perceives after the fact, just as it may per- 
ceive the relations of superiority, of distance, of 
causality, of container and content, of substance and 
accident, or of contrast between an object, and 
some second object which the associative machinery 
calls up." 

Association by resemblance presupposes a joint 
labor of association and dissociation — it is an active 
form. Consequently it is the principal source of 
the material of the creative imagination, as the 
sequel of this work will sufficiently show. 

After this rather long but necessary preface, we 
come to the intellectual factor rightly so termed, 
which we have been little by little approaching. 
The essential, fundamental element of the creative 
imagination in the intellectual sphere is the capacity 
of thinking by analogy; that is, by partial and often 
accidental resemblance. By analogy we mean an 
imperfect kind of resemblance: like is a genus of 
which analogue is a species. 

Let us examine in some detail the mechanism of 

*For the discussions on the reduction to a unity, a detailed 
bibliography will be found in Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologie 
(Stuttgart, 1896), p. 490. On the comparison of the two laws, 
James, op, cit., I, 590; Sully, op. cit, I, 331 ff; Hoffding, Psy- 
chologie, 213 ff. (Eng. ed. Outlines of Psychology, pp. 152 flf.). 



26 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

this mode of thought in order that we may under- 
stand how analogy is, by its very nature, an almost 
inexhaustible instrument of creation. 

1 . Analogy may be based solely on the number of 
attributes compared. Let a b c d e f and r s t u d v 
be two beings or objects, each letter representing 
symbolically one of the constitutive attributes. It 
is evident that the analogy between the two is very 
weak, since there is only one common element, d. 
If the number of the eleinents common to both in- 
creases, the analogy will grow in the same propor- 
tion. But the agreement represented above is not 
infrequent among minds unused to a somewhat se- 
vere discipline. A child sees in the moon and stars 
a mother surrounded by her daughters. The abori- 
gines of Australia called a book "mussel," merely 
because it opens and shuts like the valves of a shell- 
fish.^ 

2. Analogy may have for its basis the quality or 
value of the compound attributes. It rests on a 
variable element, which oscillates from the essential 
to the accidental, from the reality to the appearance. 
To the layman, the likeness between cetacians and 
fishes are great; to the scientist, slight. Here, 
again, numerous agreements are possible, provided 
one take no account either of their solidity or their 
frailty. 

3. Lastly, in minds without power, there occurs 

* Note here a characteristically naive working of the primitive 
intellect in explaining the unknown in terms of the known, 
Cf. Part II, Chap, iii, below. (Tr.) 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 2^ 

a semi-unconscious operation that we may call a 
transfer through the omission of the middle term. 
There is analogy between a b c d e and g h a i f. 
through the common letter a; between g h a i f and 
X y f 2 q through the common letter f; and finally an 
analogy becomes established between a h c d e and 
X y f z qioT no other reason than that of their com- 
mon analogy with g h a i f. In the realm of the* 
affective states, transfers of this sort are not at all 
rare. 

^ Analogy, an unstable process, undulating and 
multiform, gives rise to the most unforeseen and 
novel groupings. Through its pliability, which is 
almost unlimited, it produces in equal measure ab- 
surd comparisons and very original inventions. 

After these remarks on the mechanism of think- 
ing by analogy, let us glance at the processes it em- 
ploys in its creative work. The problem is, appar-' 
ently, inextricable. Analogies are so numerous, so 
various, so arbitrary, that we may despair of finding 
any regularity whatever in creative work. Despite 
this it seems, however, reducible to two principal 
types or processes, which are personification, and 
transformation or metamorphosis. 

Personification is the earlier process. It is rad- 
ical, always identical with itself, but transitory. 
It goes out from ourselves toward other things. 
It consists in attributing life to everything, in sup- 
posing in everything that shows signs of life — and 
even in inanimate objects — desires, passions, and 
acts of will analogous to ours, acting like ourselves 



28 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

in view of definite ends. This state of mind is 
incomprehensible to an adult civilized man; but it 
must be admitted, since there are facts without num- 
ber that show its existence. We do not need to 
cite them — they are too well known. They fill the 
works of ethnologists, of travelers in savage lands, 
of books of mythology. Besides, all of us, at the 
commencement of our lives, during our earliest 
childhood, have passed through this inevitable stage 
of universal animism. Works on child-psychology 
abound in observations that leave no possible room 
for doubt on this point. The child endows every- 
thing with life, and he does so the more in propor- 
tion as he is more imaginative. But this stage, 
which among civilized people lasts only a brief 
period, remains in the primitive man a permanent 
disposition and one that is always active. This 
process of personification is the perennial fount 
whence have gushed the greater number of myths, 
an enormous mass of superstitions, and a large 
number of esthetic productions. To sum up in a 
word, all things that have been invented ex analogia 
hominis. 

Transformation or metamorphosis is a general, 
permanent process under many forms, proceeding 
not from the thinking subject towards objects, but 
from one object to another, from one thing to an- 
other. It consists of a transfer through partial 
resemblance. This operation rests on two funda- 
mental bases — depending at one time on vague re- 
semblances (a cloud becomes a mountain, or a 



THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR. 29 

mountain a fantastic animal ; the sound of the wind 
a plaintive cry, etc.), or again, on a resemblance 
with a predominating emotional element: A per- 
ception provokes a feeling, and becomes the mark, 
sign, or plastic form thereof (the lion represents 
courage; the cat, artifice; the cypress, sorrow; and 
so on). All this, doubtless, is erroneous or arbi- 
trary; but the function of the imagination is to in- 
vent, not to perceive. All know that this process 
creates metaphors, allegories, symbols; it should 
not, however, be believed on that account that it 
remains restricted to the realm of art or of the de- 
velopment of language. We meet it every moment 
in practical life, in mechanical, industrial, com- 
mercial, and scientific invention, and we shall, later, 
give a large number of examples in support of this 
statement. 

Let us note, briefly, that analogy, as an imperfect 
form of resemblance — as was said above, if we as- 
sume among the objects compared a totality of like- 
nesses and differences in varying proportions — 
necessarily allows all degrees. At one end of the 
scale, the comparison is made between valueless or 
exaggerated likenesses. At the other end, analogy 
is restricted to exact resemblance; it approaches 
cognition, strictly so called ; for example, in mechan- 
ical and scientific invention. Hence it is not at all 
surprising that the imagination is often a substitute 
for, and as Goethe expressed it, "a forerunner of," 
reason. Between the creative imagination and ra- 
tional investigation there is a community of nature 



30 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

— both presuppose the abihty of seizing upon like- 
nesses. On the other hand, the predominance of the 
exact process establishes from the outset a difference 
between ^'thinkers" and imaginative dreamers ("vis- 
ionaries").^ 

*It is yet, and will probably long remain, an open question 
whether we can draw any clear distinction between the two 
kinds of mind here discussed. The author is careful to base 
his distinction on the "predominance" of the "rational'* or 
of the "imaginative" process. So-called "thinkers," who do 
nothing, can not, certainly, be ranked with the persons of great 
intellectual attainment through whose efforts the progress of the 
world is made; on the other hand, the author seeks to make 
results or accomplishments the crucial test of true imagination 
(see Introduction). 

As regards the relative value or rank of the two bents of 
mind there has ever been, and probably forever will be, great 
difference of opinion. Even in this intensely "practical" age 
there is an undercurrent of feeling that the narrowly "prac- 
tical" individual is not the final ideal, and the innermost con- 
viction of many is the same as that of the poet who declares 
that "a dreamer lives forever, but a thinker dies in a day." 
(Tr.) 



CHAPTER II 

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 

The influence of emotional states on the working 
of the imagination is a matter of current observa- 
tion. But it has been studied chiefly by morahsts, 
who most often have criticised or condemned it as 
an endless cause of mistakes. The point of view of 
the psychologist is altogether different. He does 
not need at all to investigate whether emotions and 
passions give rise to mental phantoms — which is an 
indisputable fact — but why and how they arise. 
For, the emotional factor yields in importance to 
no other; it is the ferment without which no crea- 
tion is possible. Let us study it in its principal 
forms, although we may not be able at this moment 
to exhaust the topic. 



It is necessary to show at the outset that the in- 
fluence of the emotional life is unlimited, that it 
penetrates the entire field of invention with no re- 
striction whatever; that this is not a gratuitous as- 
sertion, but is, on the contrary, strictly justified 



32 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

by facts, and that we are right in maintaining the 
following two propositions : 

I. All forms of the creative imagination imply 
elements of feeling. 

This statement has been challenged by authori- 
tative psychologists, who hold that "emotion is 
added to imagination in its esthetic aspect, not in 
its mechanical and intellectual form." This is an 
error of fact resulting from the confusion, or from 
the imperfect analysis, of two distinct cases. In 
the case of non-esthetic creation, the role of the emo- 
tional life is simple; in esthetic creation, the role of 
emotional element is double. 

Let us consider invention, first, in its most general 
form. The emotional element is the primal, orig- 
inal factor; for all invention presupposes a want, 
a craving, a tendency, an unsatisfied impulse, often 
even a state of gestation full of discomfort. More- 
over, it is concomitant, that is, under its form of 
pleasure or of pain, of hope, of spite, of anger, etc., 
it accompanies all the phases or turns of creation. 
The creator may, haphazard, go through the most 
diverse forms of exaltation and depression; may 
feel in turn the dejection of repulse and the joy of 
success; finally the satisfaction of being freed from 
a heavy burden. I challenge anyone to produce 
a solitary example of invention wrought out in 
ahstracto, and free from any factors of feeling. 
Human nature does not allow such a miracle. 

Now, let us take up the special case of esthetic 
creation, and of forms approaching thereto. Here 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 33 

again we find the original emotional element as at 
first motor, then attached to various aspects of 
creation, as an accompaniment. But, in addition, 
affective states become material for the creative ac- 
tivity. It is a well-known fact, almost a rule, that 
the poet, the novelist, the dramatist, and the musi- 
cian — often, indeed, even the sculptor and the 
painter — experience the thoughts and feeling of their 
characters, become identified with them. There are, 
then, in this second instance, two currents of feeling 
— ^the one, constituting emotion as material for art, 
the other, drawing out creative activity and develop- 
ing along with it. 

The difference between the two cases that we 
have distinguished consists in this and nothing more 
than this. The existence of an emotion-content 
belonging to esthetic production changes in no way 
the psychologic mechanism of invention generally. 
Its absence in other forms of imagination does not 
at all prevent the necessary existence of affective 
elements everywhere and always. 

2. All emotional dispositions whatever may in^ 
Huence the creative imagination. 

Here, again, I find opponents, notably Oelzelt- 
Newin, in his short and substantial monograph on 
the imagination.^ Adopting the twofold division of 
emotions as sthenic and asthenic, or exciting and 
depressing, he attributes to the first the exclusive 
privilege of influencing creative activity ; but though 
the author limits his study exclusively to the esthetic 

* TJeher Phantasievorstellungen, Graz, 1889, p. 48. 



34 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

imagination, his thesis, even understood thus, is 
untenable. The facts contradict it completely, and 
it is easy to demonstrate that all forms of emotion, 
without exception, act as leaven for imagination. 

No one will deny that fear is the type of asthenic 
manifestations. Yet is it not the mother of phan- 
toms, of numberless superstitions, of altogether irra- 
tional and chimerical religious practices? 

Anger, in its exalted, violent form, is rather an 
agent of destruction, which seems to contradict my 
thesis; but let us pass over the storm, which is 
always of short duration, and we find in its place 
milder intellectualized forms, which are various 
modifications of primitive fury, passing from the 
acute to the chronic state: envy, jealousy, enmity, 
premeditated vengeance, and so forth. Are not 
these dispositions of the mind fertile in artifices, 
stratagems, inventions of all kinds? To keep even 
to esthetic creation, is it necessary to recall the say- 
ing facit indignatio versumf 

It is not necessary to demonstrate the fecundity 
of joy. As for love, everyone knows that its work 
consists of creating an imaginary being, which is 
substituted for the beloved object; then, when the 
passion has vanished, the disenchanted lover finds 
himself face to face with the bare reality. 

Sorrow rightly belongs in the category of depres- 
sing emotions, and yet, it has as great influence on 
invention as any other emotion. Do we not know 
that melancholy and even profound sorrow has fur- 
nished poets, musicians, painters, and sculptors with 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 35 

their most beautiful inspirations? Is there not an 
art frankly and deliberately pessimistic? And this 
influence is not at all limited to esthetic creation. 
Dare we hold that hypochondria and insanity fol- 
lowing upon the delirium of persecution are devoid 
of imagination? Their morbid character is, on the 
contrary, the well whence strange inventions inces- 
santly bubble. 

Lastly, that complex emotion termed "self-feel- 
ing," which reduces itself finally to the pleasure of 
asserting our power and of feeling its expansion, or 
to the pitiable feeling of our shackled, enfeebled 
power, leads us directly to the motor elements that 
are the fundamental conditions of invention. Above 
all, in this personal feeling, there is the satisfaction 
of being a casual factor, i. e., a creator, and every 
creator has a consciousness of his superiority over 
non-creators. However petty his invention, it con- 
fers upon him a superiority over those who have 
invented nothing. Although we have been surfeited 
with the repeated statement that the characteristic 
mark of esthetic creation is "being disinterested," it 
must be recognized, as Groos has so truly remarked,^ 
that the artist does not create out of the simple 
pleasure of creating, but in order that he may behold 
a mastery over other minds.^ Production is the 

^Die Spiele der TMere, Jena, 1896. The subject has been 
very well treated by this author, pp. 294-301. 

* The ' ' disinterested ' ' view is found widely advocated or 
hinted at in literature. Cf. Goethe's *'Der Sanger" (Tr.). 



36 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

natural extension of "self- feeling," and the accom- 
panying pleasure is the pleasure of conquest. 

Thus, on condition that we extend "imagination" 
to its full sense, without limiting it unduly to 
esthetics, there is, among the many forms of the 
emotional life, not one that may not stimulate in- 
vention. It remains to see this emotional factor 
at work, — to note how it can give rise to new com- 
binations; and this brings us to the association of 
ideas. 

II 

We have said above that the ideal and theoretic 
law of the recurrence of images is that of "total 
redintegration," as e. g., recalling all the incidents 
of a long voyage in chronological order, with 
neither additions nor omissions. But this formula 
expresses what ought to be, not what actually oc- 
curs. It supposes man reduced to a state of pure 
intelligence, and sheltered from all disturbing in- 
fluences. It suits the completely systematized forms 
of memory, hardened into routine and habit; but, 
outside of these cases, it remains an abstract con- 
cept. 

To this law of ideal value, there is opposed the 
real and practical law that actually obtains in the 
revival of images. It is rightly styled the "law of 
interest" or the affective law, and may be stated thus : 
In every past event the interesting parts alone revive, 
or with more intensity than the others. "Interest- 
ing" here means what affects us in some way under 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 37 

a pleasing or painful form. Let us note that the 
importance of this fact has been pointed out not by 
the associationists (a fact especially worth remem- 
bering) but by less systematic writers, strangers to 
that school, — Coleridge, Shadworth Hodgson, and 
before them, Schopenhauer. William James calls 
it the "ordinary or mixed association."^ The "law 
of interest" doubtless is less exact than the intel- 
lectual laws of contiguity and resemblance. Never- 
theless, it seems to penetrate all the more in later 
reasoning. If, indeed, in the problem of associa- 
tion we distinguish these three things — facts, laws, • 
causes — the practical law brings us near to causes.. 

Whatever the truth may be in this matter, the 
emotional factor brings about new combinations by- 
several processes. 

There are the ordinary, simple cases, with a nat- 
ural, emotional foundation, depending on momen- 
tary dispositions. They exist because of the fact 
that representations that have been accompanied 
by the same emotional state tend later to become 
associated : the emotional resemblance reunites and 
links disparate images. This differs from associa- 
tion by contiguity, which is a repetition of expe- 
rience, and from association by resemblance in the 
intellectual sense. The states of consciousness be- 
come combined, not because they have been pre- 
viously given together, not because we perceive the 
agreement of resemblance between them, but be- 
cause they have a common emotional note. Joy, 

^Psychology,!, ^im. ■ ^"""^'^ 



38 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

sorrow, love, hatred, admiration, ennui, pride, 
fatigue, etc., may become a center of attraction that 
groups images or events having otherwise no ra- 
tional relations between them, but having the same 
emotional stamp, — ^joyous, melancholy, erotic, etc. 
This form of association is very frequent in dreams 
and reveries, i. e., in a state of mind in which the 
imagination enjoys complete freedom and works 
haphazard. We easily see that this influence, active 
or latent, of the emotional factor, must cause entirely 
unexpected grouping to arise, and offers an almost 
unlimited field for novel combinations, the number 
of images having a common emotional factor being 
very great. 

There are unusual and remarkable cases with an 
exceptional emotional base. Of such is "colored 
hearing." We know that several hypotheses have 
been offered in regard to the origin of this phe- 
nomenon. Embryologically, it would seem to be 
the result of an incomplete separation between the 
sense of sight and that of hearing, and the survival, 
it is said, from a distant period of humanity, when 
this state must have been the rule; anatomically, 
the result of supposed anastamoses between the 
cerebral centers for visual and auditory sensations; 
physiologically, the result of nervous irradiation; 
psychologically, the result of association. This lat- 
ter hypothesis seems to account for the greater 
number of instances, if not for all ; but, as Flournoy 
has observed, it is a matter of "affective" imagina- 
tion. Two sensations absolutely unlike (for in- 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 39 

Stance, the color blue and the sound i) may resemble 
one another through the equal retentive quality that 
they possess in the organism of some favored indi- 
viduals, and this emotional factor becomes a bond 
of association. Observe that this hypothesis ex- 
plains also the much more unusual cases of "col- 
ored" smell, taste, and pain; that is, an abnormal 
association between given colors and tastes, smells, 
or pains. 

Although we meet them only as exceptional 
cases, these modes of association are susceptible to 
analysis, and seem clear, almost self-evident, if we 
compare them with other, subtle, refined, barely per- 
ceptible cases, the origin of which is a subejct for 
supposition, for guessing rather than for clear com- 
prehension. It is, moreover, a sort of imagination 
belonging to very few people: certain artists and 
some eccentric or unbalanced minds, scarcely ever 
found outside the esthetic or practical life. I wish 
to speak of the forms of invention that permit only 
fantastic conceptions, of a strangeness pushed to the 
extreme (Hoffman, Poe, Baudelaire, Goya, Wiertz, 
etc.), or surprising, extraordinary thoughts, known 
of no other men (the symbolists and decadents that 
flourish at the present time in various countries of 
Europe and America, who believe, rightly or 
wrongly, that they are preparing the esthetics of the 
future) . It must be here admitted that there exists 
an altogether special manner of feeling, dependent 
on temperament at first, which many cultivate and 
refine as though it were a precious rarity. There 



40 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

lies the true source of their invention. Doubtless, 
to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to 
establish the direct relations between their physical 
and psychical constitution and that of their work; 
to note even the particular states at the moment of 
the creative act. To me at least, it seems evident 
that the novelty, the strangeness of combinations, 
through its deep subjective character, indicates an 
emotional rather than an intellectual origin. Let 
us merely add that these abnormal manifestations 
of the creative imagination belong to the province 
of pathology rather than to that of psychology. 

Association by contrast is, from its very nature, 
vague, arbitrary, indeterminate. It rests, in truth, 
on an essentially subjective and fleeting conception, 
that of contrariety, which it is almost impossible to 
delimit scientifically ; for, most often, contraries exist 
only by and for us. We know that this form of 
association is not primary and irreducible. It is 
brought down by some to contigiu'ty, by most others 
to resemblance. These two views do not seem to 
me irreconcilable. In association by contrast we 
may distinguish two layers, — the one, superficial, 
consists of contiguity : all of us have in memory as- 
sociated couples, such as large-small, rich-poor, high- 
low, right-left, etc., which result from repetition and 
habit; the other, deep, is resemblance; contrast ex- 
ists only where a common measure betzveen two 
terms is possible. As Wundt remarks, a wedding 
may be compared to a burial (the union and separa- 
tion of a couple), but not to a toothache. There is 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 4I 

contrast between two colors, contrast between 
sounds, but not between a sound and a color, at 
least in that there may not be a common basis to 
which we may relate them, as in the previously 
given instances of "colored" sound. In associa- 
tion by contrast, there are conscious elements op- 
posed to one another, and below, an unconscious 
element, resemblance, — not clearly and logically 
perceived, but felt — that evokes and relates the con- 
scious elements. 

Whether this explanation be right or not, let us 
remark that association by contrast could not be 
left out, because its mechanism, full of unforeseen 
possibilities, lends itself easily to novel relations. 
Otherwise, I do not at all claim that it is entirely 
dependent upon the emotional factor. But, as 
Hoffding observes,^ the special property of the emo- 
tional life is moving among contraries; it is alto- 
gether determined by the great opposition between 
pleasure and pain. Thus, the effects of contrasts 
are much stronger than in the realm of sensation. 
This form of association predominates in esthetic 
and mythic creation, that is to say, in creation of the 
free fancy; it becomes dimmed in the precise forms 
of practical, mechanical, and scientific invention. 

Ill 

Hitherto we have considered the emotional factor 
under a single aspect only — the purely emotional — 
that which is manifested in consciousness under an 

^Hoffding, Psychologie, p. 219; Eng. trans., p. 161. 



42 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

agreeable or disagreeable or mixed form. But 
thoughts, feelings, and emotions include elements 
that are deeper — motor, i. e., impulsive or inhibitory 
— which we may neglect the less since it is in move- 
ments that we seek the origin of the creative imagin- 
ation. This motor element is what current speech 
and often even psychological treatises designate 
under the terms "creative instinct," "inventive in- 
stinct;'* what we express in another form when we 
say that creators are guided by instinct and "are 
pushed like animals toward the accomplishment of 
certain acts." 

If I mistake not, this indicates that the "creative 
instinct" exists in all men to some extent — feeble in 
some, perceptible in others, brilliant in the great 
inventors. 

For I do not hesitate to maintain that the creative 
instinct, taken in this strict meaning, compared to 
animal instinct, is a mere figiu'e of speech, an "en- 
tity" regarded as a reality, an abstraction. There 
are needs, appetites, tendencies, desires, common to 
all men, which, in a given individual at a given 
moment can result in a creative act; but there is no 
special psychic manifestation that may be the "cre- 
ative instinct." What, indeed, could it be? Every 
instinct has its own particular end : — hunger, thirst, 
sex, the specific instincts of the bee, ant, beaver, 
consist of a group of movements adapted for a de- 
terminate end that is always the same. Now, what 
would be a creative instinct in general which, by 
hypothesis, could produce in turn an opera, a ma- 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 43 

chine, a metaphysical theory, a system of finance, 
a plan of military campaign, and so forth? It is a 
pure fancy. Inventive genius has not a source, but 
sources. 

Let us consider from our present viewpoint the 
human duality, the homo duplex: 

[~ Suppose man reduced to a state of pure intelli- fj^^l^ 
gence, that is, capable of perceiving, remembering, 
associating, dissociating, reasoning, and nothing 
else. All creative activity is then impossible, be- 
cause there is nothing to solicit it. 

Suppose, again, man reduced to organic mani- 
festations; he is then no more than a bundle of 
wants, appetites, instincts, — that is, of motor activi- 
ties, blind forces that, lacking a sufficient cerebral 
organ, will produce nothing. 

The cooperation of both these factors is indis- 
pensable : without the first, nothing begins ; without 
the second, nothing results. I hold that it is in needs 
that we must seek for the primary cause of all in- 
ventions ; it is evident that the motor element alone 
is insufficient. If the needs are strong, energetic, 
they may determine a production, or, if the intel- 
lectual factor is insufficient, may spoil it. Many 
want to make discoveries but discover nothing. A 
want so common as hunger or thirst suggests to 
one some ingenious method of satisfying it ; another 
remains entirely destitute. 

In short, in order that a creative act occur, there 
IS required, first, a need ; then, that it arouse a com- 



44 THE CREL\TIVE IMAGINATION. 

bination of images; and lastly, that it objectify and 
realize itself in an appropriate form. 

We shall try later (in the Conclusion) to answer 
the question, Why is one imaginative ? In passing, 
let us put the opposite question. Why is one not 
imaginative? One may possess in the mind an in- 
exhaustible treasure of facts and images and yet 
produce nothing : great travelers, for example, who 
have seen and heard much, and who draw from their 
experiences only a few colorless anecdotes; men 
who were partakers in great political events or mili- 
tary movements, who leave behind only a few dry 
and chilly memoirs; prodigies of reading, living 
encyclopedias, who remain crushed under the load 
of their erudition. On the other hand, there are 
people who easily move and act, but are limited, 
lacking images and ideas. Their intellectual pov- 
erty condemns them to unproductiveness; never- 
theless, being nearer than the others to the imagin- 
ative type, they bring forth childish or chimerical 
productions. So that we may answer the question 
asked above: The non-imaginative person is such 
from lack of materials or through the absence of re- 
sourcefulness. 

Without contenting ourselves with these theoret- 
ical remarks, let us rapidly show that it is thus 
that these things actually happen. All the work of 
the creative imagination may be classed under two 
great heads — esthetic inventions and practical in- 
ventions; on the one hand, what man has brought 
to pass in the domain of art, and on the other hand. 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 45 

all else. Though this division may appear strange, 
and unjustifiable, it has reason for its being, as we 
shall see hereafter. 

Let us consider first the class of non-esthetic cre- 
ations. Very different in nature, all the products 
of this group coincide at one point: — they are of 
practical utility, they are born of a vital need, of one 
of the conditions of man's existence. There are 
first the inventions "practical" in the narrow sense — 
all that pertains to food, clothing, defense, housing, 
etc. Every one of these special needs has stimu- 
lated inventions adapted to a special end. Inven- 
tions in the social and political order answer to the 
conditions of collective existence; they arise from 
the necessity of maintaining the coherence of the 
social aggregate and of defending it against inimical 
groups. The work of the imagination whence have 
arisen the myths, religious conceptions, and the first 
attempts at a scientific explanation may seem at first 
disinterested and foreign to practical life. This is 
an erroneous supposition. Man, face to face with 
the higher powers of nature, the mystery of which 
he does not penetrate, has a need of acting upon it ; 
he tries to conciliate them, even to turn them to his 
service by magic rites and operations. His curiosity 
is not at all theoretic; he does not aim to know for 
the sake of knowing, but in order to act upon the 
outside world and to draw profit therefrom. To the 
numerous questions that necessity puts to him his 
imagination alone responds, because his reason is 



46 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

shifting and his scientific knowledge nil. Here, 
then, invention again results from urgent needs. 

Indeed, in the course of the nineteenth century 
and on account of growing civilization all these 
creations reach a second moment when their origin 
is hidden. Most of our mechanical, industrial and 
commercial inventions are not stimulated by the 
immediate necessity of living, by an urgent need ; it 
is not a question of existence but of better exist- 
ence. The same holds true of social and political 
inventions which arise from the increasing complex- 
ity and the new requirements of the aggregates 
forming great states. Lastly, it is certain that primi- 
tive curiosity has partially lost its utilitarian char- 
acter in order to become, in some men at least, the 
taste for pure research — theoretical, speculative, dis- 
interested. But all this in no way affects our thesis, 
for it is a well-known elementary psychological law 
that upon primitive wants are grafted acquired 
wants fully as imperative. The primitive need is 
modified, metamorphosed, adapted ; there remains of 
it, nonetheless, the fundamental activity toward 
creation. 

Let us now consider the class of esthetic creations. 
According to the generally accepted theory which is 
too well known for me to stop to explain it, art has 
its beginning in a superfluous, bounding activity, 
useless as regards the preservation of the individual, 
which is shown first in the form of play. Then, 
through transformation and complication, play be- 
comes primitive art, dancing, music, and poetry at 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 47 

the same time, closely united in an apparently indis- 
soluble unity. Although the theory of the absolute 
inutility of art has met some strong criticism, let us 
accept it for the present. Aside from the true or 
false character of inutility, the psychological 
mechanism remains the same here as in the preced- 
ing cases; we shall only say that in place of a vital 
need it is a need of luxury acting, but it acts only 
because it is in man. 

Nevertheless, the inutility of play is far from 
proven biologically. Groos, in his two excellent 
works on the subject,^ has maintained with much 
power the opposite view. According to him the 
theory of Schiller and Spencer, based on the ex- 
penditure of superfluous activity and the opposite 
theory of Lazarus, who reduces play to a relaxa- 
tion — ^that is, a recuperation of strength — are but 
partial explanations. Play has a positive use. In 
man there exist a great number of iifttincts that 
are not yet developed at birth. An incomplete be- 
ing, he must have education of his capacities, and 
this is obtained through play, which is the exercise 
of the natural tendencies of human activities. In 
man and in the higher animals plays are a prepa- 
ration, a prelude to the active functions of life. 
There is no instinct of play in general, hut there 
are special instincts that are manifested under the 
forms of play. If we admit this explanation, which 
does not lack potency, the work of the esthetic 

* Groos, Die Spiele der TMere, 1896, and Die Spiele der Men- 
schen, 1899 (Eng. trans., Appletons, New York, 1898, 1901). 



48 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

imagination itself would be reduced to a biological 
necessity, and there would be no reason for making 
a separate category of it. Whichever view we may 
adopt, it still remains established that any invention 
is reducible, directly or indirectly, to a particular, 
determinate need, and that to allow man a special 
instinct, the definite specific character of which 
should be stimulation to creative activity, is a fan- 
tastic notion. 

Whence, then, comes this persistent and in some 
respects seductive idea that creation is an instinc- 
tive result? Because a happy invention has char- 
acteristics that evidently relate it to instinctive ac- 
tivity in the strict sense of the word. First, pre- 
cocity, of which we shall later give numerous ex- 
amples, and which resembles the innateness of in- 
stinct. Again, orientation in a single direction : the 
inventor is, so to speak, polarized ; he is the slave of 
music, of mechanics, of mathematics ; often inapt at 
everything outside his own particular sphere. We 
know the witticism of Madame du Defiant on 
Vaucanson, who was so awkward, so insignificant 
when he ventured outside of mechanics. "One 
should say that this man had manufactured him- 
self." Finally, the ease with which invention often 
(not always) manifests itself makes it resemble 
the work of a pre-established mechanism. 

But these and similar characteristics may be lack- 
ing. They are necessary for instinct, not for in- 
vention. There are great creators who have been 
neither precocious nor confined in a narrow field, 



THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR. 49 

and who have given birth to their inventions pain- 
fully, laboriously. Between the mechanism of in- 
stinct and that of imaginative creation there are 
frequently great analogies but not identity of na- 
ture.. Every tendency of our organization, use- 
ful or hurtful, may become the beginning of a 
creative act* Every invention arises from a par- 
ticular need of human nature, acting within its 
own sphere and for its own special end. 

If now it should be asked why the creative 
imagination directs itself preferably in one line 
rather than in another — toward poetry or physics, 
trade or mechanics* geometry or painting, strategy 
or music, etc. — we have nothing in answer. It is a 
result of the individual organization, the secret of 
which we do not possess. In' ordinary life we 
meet people visibly borne along toward love or good 
cheer, toward ambition, riches or good works; 
we say that they are "so built," that such is their 
character. At bottom the two questions are iden- 
tical, and current psychology is not in a position to 
solve them. 



CHAPTER III 

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR 



By this term I designate principally, not exclu- 
sively, what ordinary speech calls ^'inspiration." In 
spite of its mysterious and semi-mythological ap- 
pearance, the term indicates a positive fact, one 
that is ill-understood in a deep sense, like all that is 
near the roots of creation. This concept has its 
history, and if it is permissible to apply a very 
general formula to a particular case we may say 
that it has developed according to the law of the 
three states assumed by the positivists. 

In the beginning, inspiration is literally ascribed 
to the gods — among the Greeks to Apollo and the 
Muses, and in like manner under various polythe- 
istic religions. Later, the gods become supernat- 
ural spirits, angels, saints, etc. In one way or an- 
other it is always regarded as external and su- 
perior to man. In the beginnings of all inventions — 
agriculture, navigation, medicine, commerce, legis- 
lation, fine arts — there is a belief in revelation; the 
human mind considers itself incapable of having 
discovered all that. Creation has arisen, we do 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. $1 

not know how, in a total ignorance of the pro- 
cesses. 

Later on these higher beings become empty for- 
mulas, mere survivals; there remain only the poets 
to invoke their aid, through the force of tradition, 
without believing in them. But side by side with 
these formal survivals there remains a mysterious 
ground which is translated by vague expressions 
and metaphors, such as "enthusiasm," "poetic 
frenzy," "possession by a spirit," "being overcome," 
"having the devil inside one," "the spirit whispers 
as it lists," etc. Here we have come out of the super- 
natural without, however, attempting a positive 
(i. e., a scientific) explanation. 

Lastly, in the third stage, we try to sound this 
unknown. Psychology sees in it a special mani- 
festation of the mind, a particular, semi-conscious, 
semi-unconscious state which we must now study. 

At first sight, and considered in its negative as- 
pect, inspiration presents a very definite character. 
It does not depend on the individual will. As in the 
case of sleep or digestion, we may try to call it 
forth, encourage it, maintain it ; but not always with 
success. Inventors, great and small, never cease to 
complain over the periods of unproductiveness which 
they undergo in spite of themselves. The wiser 
among them watch for the moment; the others 
attempt to fight against their evil fate and to create 
despite nature. 

Considered in its positive aspect, inspiration has 
two essential marks — suddenness and impersonality. 



52 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

(a) It makes a sudden eruption into conscious- 
ness, but one presupposing a latent, frequently long, 
labor. It has its analogues among other well-known 
psychic states; for example, a passion that is for- 
gotten, which, after a long period of incubation, 
reveals itself through an act; or, better, a sudden 
resolve after endless deliberation which did not 
seem able to come to a head. Again, there may be 
absence of effort and of appearance of preparation. 
Beethoven would strike haphazard the keys of a 
piano or would listen to the songs of birds. *'With 
Chopin,'* says George Sand, **creation was spon- 
taneous, miraculous; he wrought without foresee- 
ing. It would come complete, sudden, sublime." 
One might pile up like facts in abundance. Some- 
times, indeed, inspiration bursts forth in deep sleep 
and awakens the sleeper, and lest we may suppose 
this suddenness to be especially characteristic of 
artists we see it in all forms of invention. "You 
feel a little electric shock striking you in the head, 
seizing your heart at the same time — that is the mo^ 
ment of genius'* (Buffon). "In the course of my 
life I have had some happy thoughts," says Du Bois 
Reymond, "and I have often noted that they would 
come to me involuntarily, and when I was not 
thinking of the subject." Claude Bernard has 
voiced the same thought more than once. 

(b) Impersonality is a deeper character than the 
preceding. It reveals a power superior to the con- 
scious individual, strange tO' him although acting 
through him: a state which many inventors have 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 53 

expressed in the words, "I counted for nothing in 
that." The best means of recognizing it would be 
to write down some observations taken from the 
inspired individuals themselves. We do not lack 
them, and some have the virtue of good observa- 
tion.^ But that would lead us too far afield. Let 
us only remark that this imconscious impulse acts 
variously according to the individual. Some sub- 
mit to it painfully, striving against it just like the 
ancient pythoness at the time of giving her oracle. 
Others, especially in religious inspiration, submit 
them.selves entirely with pleasure or else sustain it 
passively. Still others of a more analytic turn have 
noted the concentration of all their faculties and 
capacities on a single point. But whatever charac- 
teristics it takes on, remaining impersonal at bot- 
tom and unable to appear in a fully conscious indi- 
vidual, we must admit, unless we wish to give it a 
supernatural origin, that inspiration is derived from 
the unconscious activity of the mind. In order to 
make sure of its nature it would then be necessary 
to make sure first of the nature of the unconscious, 
which is one of the enigmas of psychology. 

I put aside all the discussions on the subject as 
tiresome and useless for our present aim. Indeed, 
they reduce themselves to these two principal prop- 
ositions: for some the unconscious is a purely 
physiological activity, a "cerebration"; for others 
it is a gradual diminution of consciousness which 

* Several of them will be found in Appendix A at the end of 
this work. 



54 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

exists without being bound to me — i. e., to the prin- 
cipal consciousness. Both these are full of difficulties 
and present almost insurmountable objections.^ 

Let us take the '^unconscious" as a fact and let us 
limit ourselves to clearing it up, relating inspiration 
to mental states that have been judged worthy of 
explaining it. 

I. Hypermnesia, or exaltation of memory, in 
spite of what has been said about it, teaches us 
nothing in regard to the nature of inspiration or of 
invention in general. It is produced in hypnotism, 
mania, the excited period of "circular insanity," 
at the beginning of general paralysis, and especially 
under the form known as "the gift of tongues" in 
religious epidemics. We find, it is true, some obser- 
vations (among others one by Regis of an illiterate 
newspaper vender composing pieces of poetry of his 
own), indicating that a heightened memory some- 
times accompanies a certain tendency toward in- 
vention. But hypermnesia, pure and simple, con- 
sists of an extraordinary flood of memories totally 
lacking that essential mark of creation — new com- 
binations. It even appears that in the two instances 
there is rather an antagonism since heightened mem- 
ory comes near to the ideal law of total redintegra- 
tion, which is, as we know, a hindrance to invention. 
They are alike only with respect to the great mass 
of separable materials, but where the principle of 
unity is wanting there can be no creation. 

*0n this subject see Appendix B. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 55 

2. Inspiration has often been likened to the state 
of excitement preceding intoxication. It is a well- 
known fact that many inventors have sought it in 
wine, alcoholic liquors, toxic subtances like has- 
hish, opium, ether, etc. It is unnecessary to men- 
tion names. The abundance of ideas, the rapidity of 
their flow, the eccentric spurts and caprices, novel 
ideas, strengthening of the vital and emotional tone, 
that brief state of bounding fancy of which novel- 
ists have given such good descriptions, make evident 
to the least observing that under the influence of 
intoxication the imagination works to a much 
greater extent than ordinarily. Yet how pale that 
is compared to the action of the intellectual poisons 
above mentioned, especially hashish. The "artificial 
paradise" of DeQuincy, Moreau de Tours, Theo- 
phile Gautier, Baudelaire and others have made 
known to all an enormous expansion of the imagi- 
nation launched into a giddy course without limits 
of time and space. 

Strictly, these are facts representing only a stim- 
ulated, artificial, temporary inspiration. They do 
not take us intoi its true nature; at the most they 
may teach us concerning some of their physiological 
conditions. It is not even an inspiration in the 
strict sense, but rather a beginning, an embryo, an 
outline, analogous to the creations produced in 
dreams which are found very incoherent when we 
awake. One of the essential conditions of creation, 
a principal element — ^the directing principle that or- 
ganizes and unifies — is lacking. Under the influence 



56 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

of alcoholic drinks and of poisonous intoxicants at- 
tention and will always fall into exhaustion. 

3. With greater reason it has been sought to ex- 
plain inspiration by comparison with certain forms 
of somnambulism, and it has been said that "it is 
only the lowest degree of the latter state, somnam- 
bulism in a waking state. In inspiration it is as 
though a strange personality were speaking to the 
author; in somnambulism it is the stranger himself 
who talks or holds the pen, who speaks or writes — 
in a word, does the work."^ It would thus be the 
modified form of a state that is the culmination of 
subconscious activity and a state of double person- 
ality. As this last explanatory expression is won- 
derfully abused, and is called upon to serve in all 
conditions, preciseness is indispensable. 

The inspired individual is like an awakened 
dreamer — he lives in his dream. (Of this we might 
cite seemingly authentic examples: Shelly, Alfieri, 
etc.) Psychologically, this means that there is in 
him a double inversion of the normal state. 

To begin with, consciousness monopolized by the 
number and intensity of its images is closed to the 
influences of the outside world, or else receives them 
only to make them enter the web of its dream. The 
internal life annihilates the external, which is just 
the opposite of ordinary life. 

Further, the unconscious or subconscious activity 

*Dr. Chabaneix, Le subconscient sur les artistes, les savants, 
et les ecrvoainSf Paris, 1897, p. 87. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 57 

passes to the first plane, plays the first part, while 
preserving its impersonal character. 

This much allowed, if we would go further, we 
are thrown into increasing difficulties. The exist- 
ence of an unconscious working is beyond doubt; 
facts in profusion could be given in support of this 
obscure elaboration which enters consciousness only 
when all is done. But what is the nature of this 
work ? Is it purely physiological ? Is it psychologi- 
cal ? We come to two opposing theses. Theoreti- 
cally, we may say that everything goes on in the 
realm of the unconscious just as in consciousness, 
only without a message to me; that in clear con- 
sciousness the work may be followed up step by 
step, while in unconsciousness it proceeds likewise, 
but unknown to us. It is evident that all this is 
purely hypothetical. 

Inspiration resembles a cipher dispatch which the 
unconscious activity transmits to the conscious 
process, which translates it. Must we admit that 
in the deep levels of the unconscious there are 
formed only fragmentary combinations and that they 
reach complete systematization only in clear con- 
sciousness, or, rather, is the creative labor identical 
in both cases ? It is difficult to decide. It seems to 
be accepted that genius, or at least richness, in inven- 
tion depends on the subliminal imagination,^ not on 

* The recent case, studied with so much ability by M. Flour- 
noy in his book, **I>es Indes d la plandte Mars" (1900), is an 
example of the subliminal creative imagination, and of the work 
it is capable of doing by itself. 



58 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION.. 

the other, which is superficial in nature and soon 
exhausted. The one is spontaneous, true ; the other, 
artificial, feigned. "Inspiration" signifies uncon- 
scious imagination, and is only a special case of it. 
Conscious imagination is a kind of perfected state. 
To sum up, inspiration is the result of an under- 
hand process existing in men, in some to a very great 
degree. The nature of this work being unknown, 
we can conclude nothing as to the ultimate nature 
of inspiration. On the other hand, we may in a 
positive manner fix the value of the phenomenon in 
invention, all the more as we are inclined to over- 
value it. We should, indeed, note that inspiration 
is not a cause but an efTect — more exactly, a mo- 
ment, a crisis, a critical stage; it is an index. It 
marks either the end of an unconscious elaboration 
which may have been very short or very long, or 
else the beginning of a conscious elaboration which 
will be very short or very long (this is seen es- 
pecially in cases of creation suggested by chance). 
On the one hand, it never has an absolute begin- 
ning; on the other hand, it never delivers a finished 
work; the history of inventions suf^ciently proves 
this. Furthermore, one may pass beyond it; many 
creations long in preparation seem without a crisis, 
strictly so called; such as Newton's law of attrac- 
tion, Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," and the 
"Mona Lisa." Finally, many have felt themselves 

* We shall return to this point in another part of this work. 
See Part II, chapter iv. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 59 

really inspired without producing anything of 
value. ^ 

II 

What has been said up to this point does not ex- 
haust the study of the unconscious factor as a source 
of new combinations. Its role can be studied under 
a simpler and more limited form. For this purpose 
we need to return for the last time to association 
of ideas. The final reason for association (outside 
of contiguity, in part at least) must be sought in the 
temperament, character, individuality of the sub- 
ject, often even in the moment; that is, in a passing 
influence, hardly perceptible because it is uncon- 
scious or subconscious. These momentary disposi- 
tions in latent form can excite novel relations in two 
ways — ^through mediate association and through a 
special mode of grouping which has recently re- 
ceived the name "constellation." 

I. Mediate association has been well known since 
the time of Hamilton, who was the first to determine 
its nature and to give a personal example that has 
become classic. Loch Lomond recalled to him the 
Prussian system of education because, when visit- 
ing the lake, he had met a Prussian officer who con- 
versed with him on the subject. His general formula 
is this : A recalls C, although there is between them 
neither contiguity nor resemblance, but because a 
middle term, B, which does not enter consciousness, 
serves as a transition between A and C. This mode 
of association seemed universally accepted when, lat- 



6o THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

terly, it has been attacked by Miinsterberg and 
others. People have had recourse to experimenta- 
tion, which has given results only in slight agree- 
ment.^ For my own part, I count myself among 
those contemporaries who admit mediate association, 
and they are the greater number. Scripture, who 
has made a special study of the subject, and who 
has been able to note all the intermediate conditions 
between almost clear consciousness and the uncon- 
scious, considers the existence of mediate associa- 
tion as proven. In order to pronounce as an il- 
lusion a fact that is met with so often in daily ex- 
perience, and one that has been studied by so many 
excellent observers, there is required more than ex- 
perimental investigations (the conditions of which 
are often artificial and unnatural), some of which, 
moreover, conclude for the affirmative. 

This form of association is produced, like the 
others, now by contiguity, now by resemblance. The 
example given by Hamilton belongs to the first type. 
In the experiments by Scripture are found some of 

* Thus Howe (American Journal of Psychology, vi, 239 fif.), 
has published some investigations in the negative. One series 
of 557 experiments gave him eight apparently mediate asso- 
ciations; after examination, he reduced them to a single one, 
which seemed to him doubtful. Another series of 961 experi- 
ments gives 72 cases, for which he offers an explanation other 
than mediate association. On the other hand, Aschaffenburg 
admits them to the extent of four per cent.; the association- 
time is longer than for average associations (Psychologische 
Arheiten, I and II). Consult especially Scripture, The New 
Psychology, chapter xiii, with experiments in support of his 
conclusion. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 6l 

the second type^ — e. g., a red light recalled, through 
the vague memory of a flash of strontium light, a 
scene of an opera. 

It is clear that by its very nature mediate asso- 
ciation can give rise to novel combinations. Con- 
tiguity itself, which is usually only repetition, be- 
comes the source of unforeseen relations, thanks to 
the elimination of the middle term. Nothing, more- 
over, proves that there may not sometimes be several 
latent intermediate terms. It is possible that A 
should call up D through the medium of b and c, 
which remain below the threshold of consciousness. 
It seems even impossible not to admit this in the 
hypothesis of the subconscious, where we see only 
the two end links of the chain, without being able to 
allow a break of continuity between them. 

2. In his determination of the regulating causes 
of association of ideas, Ziehen designates one of 
these under the name of "constellation," which has 
been adopted by some writers. This may be enunci- 
ated thus : The recall of an image, or of a group of 
images, is in some cases the result of a sum of 
predominant tendencies. 

An idea may become the starting point of a host 
of associations. The word "Rome" can call up a 
hundred. Why is one called up rather than an- 
other, and at such a moment rather than at an- 
other? There are some associations based on con- 
tiguity and on resemblance which one may foresee, 
but how about the rest? Here is an idea A; it is 
the center of a network; it can radiate in all direc- 



62 THE CREL\TIVE IMAGINATION. 

tions — B, C, D, E, F, etc. Why does it call up now 
B, later F? 

It is because every image is comparable to a force, 
which may pass from the latent to the active condi- 
tion, and in this process may be reinforced or 
checked by other images. There are simultaneous 
and inhibitory tendencies. 5 is in a state of tension 
and C is not; or it may be that D exerts an arrest- 
ing influence on C. Consequently C cannot prevail. 
But an hour later conditions have changed and vic- 
tory rests with C This phenomenon rests on a 
physiological basis : the existence of several currents 
diffusing themselves through the brain and the pos- 
sibility of receiving simultaneous excitations.^ 

A few examples will make plainer this phenome- 
non of reinforcement, in consequence of which an 
association prevails. Wahle reports that the Gothic 
Hotel de Ville, near his house, had never suggested 
to him the idea of the Doges' Palace at Venice, in 
spite of certain architectural likenesses, until a cer- 
tain day when this idea broke upon him with much 
clearness. He then recalled that two hours before 
he had observed a lady wearing a beautiful brooch 
in the form of a gondola. Sully rightly remarks 
that it is much easier to recall the words of a for- 
eign language when we return from the country 
where it is spoken than when we have lived a long 
time in our own, because the tendency toward recol- 
lection is reinforced by the recent experience of the 

* Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, 4th edi- 
tion, 1898, pp. 164, 174. Also, Sully, Human Mind, I, 343. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR. 63 

words heard, spoken, read, and a whole array of 
latent dispositions that work in the same direction. 

In my opinion we would find the finest examples 
of "constellation," regarded as a creative element, 
in studying the formation and development of 
myths. Everywhere and always man has had for 
material scarcely anything save natural phenomena 
— the sky, land, water, stars, storms, wind, seasons, 
life, death, etc. On each of these themes he builds 
thousands of explanatory stories, which vary from 
the grandly imposing to the laughably childish. 
Every myth is the work of a human group which 
has worked according to the tendencies of its special 
genius under the influence of various stages of in- 
tellectual culture. No process is richer in resources, 
of freer turn, or more apt to give what every in- 
ventor promises — the novel and unexpected. 

To sum up : The initial element, external or in- 
ternal, excites associations that one cannot always 
foresee, because of the numerous orientations possi- 
ble; an analogous case to that which occurs in the 
realm of the will when there are present reasons 
for and against, acting and not acting, one direc- 
tion or another, now or later — when the final reso- 
lution cannot be predicted, and often depends on 
imperceptible causes. 

In conclusion, I anticipate a possible question: 
"Does the unconscious factor differ in nature from 
the two others (intellectual and emotional) ?" The 
answer depends on the hypothesis that one holds 
as to the nature of the unconscious itself. Accord- 



64 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ing to one view it would be especially physiological, 
consequently different ; according to another, the dif- 
ference can exist only in the processes: unconscious 
elaboration is reducible to intellectual or emotional 
processes the preparatory work of which is slighted, 
and which enters consciousness ready made. Conse- 
quently, the unconscious factor would be a special 
form of the other two rather than a distinct element 
in invention. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE 
IMAGINATION 

Whatever opinion we may hold concerning the 
nature of the unconscious, since that form of activity 
is related more than any other to the physiological 
conditions of the mental life, the present time is 
suitable for an exposition of the hypotheses that it 
is permissible to express concerning the organic 
bases of the imagination. What we may regard as 
positive, or even as probable, is very little. 

I 

First, the anatomical conditions. Is there a "seat" 
of the imagination? Such is the form of the ques- 
tion asked for the last twenty years. In that period 
of extreme and closely bounded localization men 
strained themselves to bind down every psychic 
manifestation to a strictly determined point of the 
brain. Today the problem presents itself no longer 
in this simple way. As at present we incline 
toward scattered localization, functional rather than 
properly anatomical, and as we often understand 
by "center" the synergic action of several centers 



66 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

differently grouped according to the individual case, 
our question becomes equivalent to : *'Are there cer- 
tain portions of the brain having an exclusive or pre- 
ponderating part in the working of the creative 
imagination?" Even in this form the question is 
hardly acceptable. Indeed, the imagination is not 
a primary and relatively simple function like that 
of visual, auditory and other sensations. We have 
seen that it is a state of tertiary formation and very 
complex. There is required, then, ( i ) that the ele- 
ments constituting imagination be determined in a 
rigorous manner, but the foregoing analysis makes 
no pretense of being definitive; (2) that each of 
these constitutive elements may be strictly related 
to its anatomic conditions. It is evident that we 
are far from possessing the secret of such a mechan- 
ism. 

An attempt has been made to put the question 
in a more precise and limited form by studying the 
brains of men distinguished in different lines. But 
this method, in avoiding the difficulty, answers our 
question indirectly only. Most often great inventors 
possess qualities besides imagination indispensable 
for success (Napoleon, James Watt, etc.). How 
draw a dividing line so as to assign to the imagina- 
tion only its rightful share? In addition, the ana- 
tomical determination is beset with difficulties. 

A method flourishing very greatly about the mid- 
dle of the nineteenth century consisted of weighing 
carefully a large number of brains and drawing vari- 
ous conclusions as to intellectual superiority or in- 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. 6/ 

feriority from a comparison of the weights. We 
find on this point numerous documents in the special 
works pubHshed during the period mentioned. But 
this method of weights has given rise to so many- 
surprises and difficulties in the way of explanation 
that it has been quite necessary to give it up, since 
we see in it only another element of the problem. 

Nowadays we attribute the greatest importance to 
the morphology of the brain, to its histological struc- 
ture, the marked development of certain regions, the 
determination not only of centers but of connec- 
tions and associations between centers. On this last 
point contemporary anatomists have given them- 
selves up to eager researches, and, although the 
cerebral architecture is not conceived by all in the 
same way, it is proper for psychology to note that 
all with their "centers" or "associational system" 
try to translate into their own language the complex 
conditions of mental life. Since we must choose 
from among these various anatomical views let us 
accept that of Flechsig, one of the most renowned 
and one having also the advantage of putting di- 
rectly the problem of the oro-anic conditions of the 
imagination. 

We know that Flechsig relies on the embryo- / 
logical method — that is, on the development — in the 
order of time, of nerves and centers. For him 
there exist on the one hand sensitive regions (sen- 
sory-motor), occupying about a third of the cortical 
surface; on the other hand, association-centers, oc- 
cupying the remaining part. 



68 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

So far as the sensory centers are concerned, de- 
velopment occurs in the following order: Organic 
sensations (middle of cerebral cortex), smell (base 
of the brain and part of the frontal lobes), sight 
(occipital lobe), hearing (first temporal). Whence 
it results that in a definite part of the brain the body 
comes to proper consciousness of its impulses, wants, 
appetites, pains, movements, etc., and that this part 
develops first — "knowledge of the body precedes 
that of the outside world." 

In what concerns the associational centers, Flech- 
sig supposes three regions : The great posterior cen- 
ter (parieto-occipito-temporal) ; another, much 
smaller, anterior or frontal ; and a middle center, the 
smallest of all (the Island of Reil). Comparative 
anatomy proves that the associational centers are 
more important than those of sensation. Among 
the lower mammals they develop as we go up the 
scale: 'That which makes the psychic man may 
be said to be the centers of association that he pos- 
sesses." In the new-born child the sensitive centers 
are isolated, and, in the absence of connections be- 
tween them, the unity of the self cannot be mani- 
fested ; there is a plurality of consciousness. 

This much admitted, let us return to our special 
question, which Flechsig asks in these words : "On 
what does genius rest? Is it based on a special 
structure in the brain, or rather on special irritabil- 
ity? that is, according to our present notions, on 
chemical factors? We may hold the first opinion 
with all possible force. Genius is always united to 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. 69 

a Special structure, to a particular organization of 
the brain.'' All parts of this organ do not have the 
same value. It has been long admitted that the 
frontal part may serve as a measure of intellectual 
capacity ; but we must allow, contrariwise, that there 
are other regions, "principally a center located under 
the protuberance at the top of the head, which is 
very much developed in all men of genius whose 
brains have been studied down to our day. In 
Beethoven, and probably also in Bach, the enormous 
development of this part of the brain is striking. In 
great scientists like Gauss the centers of the posterior 
region of the brain and those of the frontal region 
are strongly developed. The scientific genius thus 
shows proportions of brain-structure other than the 
artistic genius."^ There would then be, according 
to our author, a preponderance of the frontal and 
parietal regions — the former obtain especially among 
artists ; the latter among scientists. Already, twenty 
years before Flechsig, Riidinger had noted the ex- 
traordinary development of the parietal convolutions 
in eminent men after a study of eighteen brains. All 
the convolutions and fissures were so developed, 
said he, that the parieto-occipital region had an alto- 
gether peculiar character. 

By way of summary we must bear in mind that, 
as regards anatomical conditions, even when depend- 
ing on the best of sources, we can at present give 
only fragmentary, incomplete, hypothetical views. 
Let us now go on to the physiology. 
* Flechsig, GeJiirn und Seele, 1896. 



70 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

II 

We might have rightly asked whether the physi- 
ological states existing along with the working of 
the creative imagination are the cause, effect, or 
merely the accompaniment of this activity. Prob- 
ably all the three conditions are met with. First, 
concomitance is an accomplished fact, and we may 
consider it as an organic manifestation parallel to 
that of the mind. Again, the employment of arti- 
ficial means to excite and maintain the effervescence 
of the imagination assigns a causal or antecedent 
position to the physiologic conditions. Lastly, the 
psychic activity may be initial and productive of 
changes in the organism, or, if these already exist, 
may auginent and prolong them. 

The most instructive instances are those indicated 
by very clear manifestations and profound modifica- 
tions of the bodily condition. Such are the moments 
of inspiration or simply those of warmth from work 
which arise in the form of sudden impulses. 

The general fact of most importance consists of 
changes in the blood circulation. Increase of in- 
tellectual activity means an increase of work in the 
cortical cells, dependent on a congested, sometimes 
a temporarily anaemic state. Hypergemia seems 
rather the rule, but we also know that slight anaemia 
increases cortical excitability. "Weak, contracted 
pulse; pale, chilly skin; overheated head; brilliant, 
sunken, roving eyes," such is the classic, frequently 
quoted description of the physiological state during 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. 71 

creative labor. There are numerous inventors who, 
of their own accord, have noted these changes — ir- 
regular pulse, in the case of Lagrange; congestion 
of the head, in Beethoven, who made use of cold 
douches to relieve it, etc. This elevation of the vital 
tone, this nervous tension, translates itself also into 
motor form through movements analogous to re- 
flexes, without special end, mechanically repeated 
and always the same in the same man — e. g., move- 
ment of the feet, hands, fingers ; whittling the table 
or the arms of a chair (as in the case of Napoleon 
when he was elaborating a plan of campaign), etc. 
It is a safety-valve for the excessive flow of nervous 
impulse, and it is admitted that this method of ex- 
penditure is not useless for preserving the under- 
standing in all its clearness. In a word, increase of 
the cerebral circulation is the formula covering the 
majority of observations on this subject. 

Does experimentation, strictly so called, teach us 
anything on this point ? Numerous and well-known 
physiological researches, especially those of Mosso, 
show that all intellectual, and, most of all, emotional, 
work, produces cerebral congestion ; that the brain- 
volume increases, and the volume of the peripheral 
organs diminishes. But that tells us nothing par- 
ticularly about the imagination, which is but a 
special case under the rule. Latterly, indeed, it has 
been proposed to study inventors by an objective 
method through the examination of their several 
circulatory, respiratory, digestive apparatus; their 



'J'2 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

general and special sensibility; the modes of their 
memory and forms of association, their intellectual 
processes, etc. But up to this time no conclusion has 
been drawn from these individual descriptions that 
would allow any generalization. Besides, has an 
experiment, in the strict sense of the word, ever 
been made at the "psychological moment"? I know 
of none. Would it be possible ? Let us admit that 
by some happy chance the experimenter, using all 
his means of investigation, can have the subject 
under his hand at the exact moment of inspiration 
— of the sudden, fertile, brief creative impulse — 
would not the experiment itself be a disturbing 
cause, so that the result would be ipso facto vitiated, 
or at least unconvincing? 

There still remains a mass of facts deserving 
summary notice — the oddities of inventors. Were 
we to collect only those that may be regarded as 
authentic we could make a thick volume. Despite 
their anecdotal character these evidences do not 
seem to be unworthy of some regard. 

It is impossible to enter here upon an enumeration 
that would be endless. After having collected for 
my own information a large number of these strange 
peculiarities, it seems to me that they are reducible 
to two categories : 

(i) Those inexplicable freaks dependent on the 
individual constitution, and more often probably 
also on experiences in life the memory of which 
has been lost. Schiller, for example, kept rotten 
apples in his work desk. 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. 73 

(2) The others, more numerous, are easy to ex- 
plain. They are physiological means consciously or 
unconsciously chosen to aid creative work; they are 
auxiliary helpers of the imagination. 

The most frequent method consists of artificially 
increasing the flow of blood to the brain. Rousseau 
would think bare-headed in full sunshine; Bossuet 
would work in a cold room with his head wrapped 
in furs; others would immerse their feet in ice-cold 
water (Gretry, Schiller). Very numerous are those 
who think "horizontally" — that is, lying stretched 
out and often flattened under their blankets (Mil- 
ton, Descartes, Leibniz, Rossini, etc.) 

Some require motor excitation; they work only 
when walking,^ or else prepare for work by physical 
exercise (Mozart). For variety's sake, let us note 
those who must have the noise of the streets, crowds, 
talk, festivities, in order to invent. For others 
there must be external pomp and a personal part 
in the scene (Machiavelli, Buffon). Guido Reni 
would paint only when dressed in magnificent style, 
his pupils crowded about him and attending to his 
wants in respectful silence. 

On the opposite side are those requiring retire- 
ment, silence, contemplation, even shadowy dark- 
ness, like Lamennais. In this class we find especial- 
ly scientists and thinkers — Tycho-Brahe, who for 
twenty-one years scarcely left his observatory ; Leib- 

* Is it possible that this would explain the fact of Aristotle 
lecturing to his pupils while walking about, thus giving the 
name "peripatetic'' to his school and system? (Tr.) 



74 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

niz, who could remain for three days ahnost motion- 
less in an armchair. 

But most methods are too artificial or too strong 
not to become quickly noxious. Every one knows 
what they are — abuse of wine, alcoholic liquors, nar- 
cotics, tobacco, coffee, etc., prolonged periods of 
wakefulness, less for increasing the time for work 
than to cause a state of hyperesthesia and a morbid 
sensibility (Goncourt). 

Summing up : The organic bases of the creative 
imagination, if there are any specially its own, re- 
main to be determined. For in all that has been said 
we have been concerned only with some conditions 
of the general working of the mind — assimilation 
as well as invention. The eccentricities of inventors 
studied carefully and in a detailed manner would 
finally, perhaps, be most instructive material, be- 
cause it would allow us to penetrate into their in- 
most individuality. Thus, the physiology of the 
imagination quickly becomes pathology. I shall not 
dwell on this, having purposely eliminated the mor- 
bid side of our subject. It will, however, be neces- 
sary to return thereto, touching upon it in another 
part of this essay. 

Ill 

There remains a problem, so obscure and enig- 
matic that I scarcely venture to approach it, in the 
analog}^ that most languages — the spontaneous ex- 
pression of a common thought — establish between 
physiologic and psychic creation. Is it only a super- 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. 75 

ficial likeness, a hasty judgment, a metaphor, or does 
it rest on some positive basis? Generally, the vari- 
ous manifestations of mental activity have as their 
precursor an unconscious form from which they 
arise. The sensitiveness belonging to living sub- 
stance, known by the names heliotropism, chemo- 
tropism, etc., is like a sketch of sensation and of the 
reactions following it; organic memory is the basis 
and the obliterated form of conscious memory. Re- 
flexes introduce voluntary activity; appetitions and 
hidden tendencies are the forerunners of effective 
psychology. Instinct, on several sides, is like an 
unconscious and specific trial of reason. Has the 
creative power of the human mind also analogous 
antecedents, a physiological equivalent? 

One metaphysician, Froschammer, who has ele- 
vated the creative imagination to the rank of prim- 
ary world-principle, asserts this positively. For him 
there is an objective or cosmic imagination working 
in nature, producing the innumerable varieties of 
vegetable and animal forms; transformed into sub- 
jective imagination it becomes in the human brain 
the source of a new form of creation. "The very 
same principle causes the living forms to appear — a 
sort of objective images — and the subjective images, 
a kind of living form."^ However ingenious and 
attractive this philosophical theory may be, it is 
evidently of no positive value for psychology. 

Let us stick to experience. Physiology teaches 

^Die Phantasie als Grundprincip der Weltprocesses, Mlinchen, 
1877. For other details on the subject, see Appendix C. 



y6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

that generation is a "prolonged nutrition," a sur- 
plus, as we see so plainly in the lower forms of 
agamous generation (budding, division). The 
creative imagination likewise presupposes a super- 
abundance of psychic life that might otherwise spend 
itself in another way. Generation in the physical 
order is a spontaneous, natural tendency, although 
it may be stimulated, successfully or otherwise, by 
artificial means. We can say as much of the other. 
This list of resemblances it would be easy to pro- 
long. But all this is insufficient for the establish- 
ment of a thorough identity between the two cases 
and the solution of the question. 

It is possible to limit it, to put it i»to more precise 
language. Is there a connection between the devel- 
opment of the generative function and that of the 
imagination ? Even in this form the question scarce- 
ly permits any but vague answers. In favor of a 
connection we may allege : 

(i) The well-known influence of puberty on the 
imagination of both sexes, expressing itself in day- 
dreams, in aspirations toward an unattainable ideal,^ 

*A passage from Chateaubriand (cited by Paulhan, "Rev. 
Philos., March, 1898, p. 237) is a typical description of the 
situation: **The warmth of my (adolescent) imagination, my 
shyness, and solitude, caused me, instead of casting myself on 
something without, to fall back upon myself. Wanting a real 
object, I evoked through the power of my desires, a phantom, 
which thenceforth never left me; I made a woman, composed 
of all the women that I had already seen. That charming 
idea followed me everywhere, though invisible; I conversed 
with her as with a real being; she would change according to 
my frenzy. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue. ' ' 



ORGANIC CONDITIONS. J^ 

in the genius for invention that love bestov^s upon 
the least favored. Let us recall also the mental 
troubles, the psychoses designated by the name 
hebephrenia. With adolescence coincides the first 
flowering of the fancy which, having emerged from 
its swaddling-clothes of childhood, is not yet sophis- 
ticated and rationalized. 

It is not a matter of indifference for the general 
thesis of the present work to note that this devel- 
opment of the imagination depends wholly on the 
first effervescence of the emotional life. That "in- 
fluence of the feelings on the imagination" and of 
"the imagination on the feelings'' of which the 
moralists and the older psychologists speak so often 
is a vague formula for expressing this fact — ^that 
the motor element included in the images is re- 
inforced. 

(2) Per contra J the weakening of the generative 
power and of the constructive imagination coincide 
in old age, which is, in a word, a decay of nutrition, 
a progressive atrophy. It is proper not to omit the 
influence of castration. According to the theory of 
Brown-Sequard, it produces an abatement of the 
nutritive functions through the suppression of an 
internal stimulus ; and, although its relations to the 
imagination have not been especially studied, it is 
not rash to admit that it is an arresting cause. 

However, the foregoing merely establishes, be- 
tween the functions compared, a concomitance in 
the general course of their evolution and in their 
critical periods; it is insuflicient for a conclusion. 



78 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

There would be needed clear, authentic and suf- 
ficiently numerous observations proving that indi- 
viduals bereft of imagination of the creative type 
have acquired it suddenly through the sole fact of 
their sexual influences, and, inversely, that brilliant 
imaginations have faded under the contrary condi- 
tions. We find some of these evidences in Cabanis,* 
Moreau de Tours and various alienists; they would 
seem to be in favor of the affirmative, but some seem 
to me not sure enough, others not explicit enough. 
Despite my investigations on this point, and inquiry 
of competent persons, I do not venture to draw a 
definite conclusion. I leave the question open; it 
will perhaps tempt another more fortunate inves- 
tigator. 

* Cabanis, Rapports du Physique ct du Moral, 6flition Peisse, 
pp. 248-249, an anecdote that he relates after Buffon. Analo- 
gous, but less clear, facts may also be found in Moreau de 
Tours* Psychologic morbide. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY 

The psychological nature of the imagination 
would be very imperfectly known were we limited 
to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all cre- 
ation whatever, great or small, shows an organic 
character; it implies a unifying, synthetic principle. 
Every one of the three factors — intellectual, emo- 
tional, unconscious — works not as an isolated fact 
on its own account; they have no worth save 
through their union, and no signification save 
through their common bearing. This principle of 
unity, which all invention demands and requires, is 
at one time intellectual in nature, i. e., as a fixed 
idea; at another time emotional, i. e., as a fixed emo- 
tion or passion. These terms — fixed idea, fixed 
emotion — are somewhat absolute and require re- 
strictions and reservations, which will be made in 
what follows. 

The distinction between the two is not at all 
absolute. Every fixed idea is supported and main- 
tained by a need, a tendency, a desire; i. e., by an 
affective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in 
the persistence of an idea which, by hypothesis. 



80 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

would be a purely intellectual state, cold and dry. 
The principle of unity in this form naturally pre- 
dominates in certain kinds of creation : in the prac- 
tical imagination wherein the end is clear, where 
images are direct substitutes for things, where in- 
vention is subjected to strict conditions under pen- 
alty of visible and palpable check; in the scientific 
and metaphysical imagination, which works with 
concepts and is subject to the laws of rational logic. 

Every fixed emotion should realize itself in an 
idea or image that gives it body and systematizes it, 
without which it remains diffuse; and all affective 
states can take on this permanent form which makes 
a unified principle of them. The simple emotions 
(fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.), the complex or de- 
rived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual 
ideas) may equally monopolize consciousness in their 
own interests. 

We thus see that these two terms — fixed idea, 
fixed emotion — are almost equivalent, for they both 
imply inseparable elements, and serve only to indicate 
the preponderance of one or the other element. 

This principle of unity, center of attraction and 
support of all the working of the creative imagina- 
tion — that is, a subjective principle tending to be- 
come objectified — is the ideal. In the complete 
sense of the word — not restrained merely to esthetic 
creation or made synonymous with perfection as in 
ethics — the ideal is a construction in images that 
should become a reality. If we liken imaginative 
creation to physiological generation, the ideal is the 



^ 



PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 8l 

ovum awaiting fertilization in order to begin its de- 
velopment. 

We could, to be more exact, make a distinction 
between the synthetic principle and the ideal concep- 
tion which is a higher form of it. The fixation of 
an end and the discovery of appropriate means are 
the necessary and sufficient conditions for all inven- 
tion. A creation, whatever it be, that looks only 
to present success, can satisfy itself with a unify- 
ing principle that renders it viable and organized, 
but we can look higher than the merely necessary 
and sufficient. 

The ideal is the principle of unity in motion in 
its historic evolution; like all development, it ad- 
vances or recedes according to the times. Nothing 
is less justified than the conception of a fixed arche- 
type (an undisguised survival of the Platonic 
Ideas), illuminating the inventor, who reproduces 
it as best he can. The ideal is a nonentity; it arises 
in the inventor and through him; its life is a 
becoming. 

Psychologically, it is a construction in images be- 
longing to the merely sketched or outlined type.^ 
It results from a double activity, negative and posi- 
tive, or dissociation and association, the first cause 
and origin of which is found in a will that it shall 
be so; it is the motor tendency of images in the 

* For the distinction between this form of imagination and 
the two others (fixed, objectified), I refer the reader to the 
Conclusion of this work, where the subject will be treated in 
detail. 



82 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

nascent state engendering the ideal. The inventor 
cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his tempera- 
ment, character, taste, prejudices, sympathies and 
antipathies — in short, his interest. In this separa- 
tion, already studied, let us note one important par- 
ticular. *'\Ve know nothing of the complex psychic 
production that may simply be the sum of component 
elements and in which they would remain with their 
own characters, with no modification. The nature 
of the components disappears in order to give birth 
to a novel phenomenon that has its own and par- 
ticular features. The construction of the ideal is 
not a mere grouping of past experiences ; in its total- 
ity it has its own individual characteristics, among 
which we no more see the composing lines than we 
see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water. 
In no scientific or artistic production, says Wundt, 
does the whole appear as made up of its parts, like 
a mosaic."^ In other words, it is a case of mental 
chemistry. The exactness of this expression, which 
is due, I believe, to J. Stuart Mill, has been ques- 
tioned. Still it answers to positive facts ; for ex- 
ample, in perception, to the phenomena of contrast 
and their analogues; juxtaposition or rapid succes- 
sion of two different colors, two different sounds, 
of tactile, olfactory, gustatory impressions differ- 
ent in quality, produces a particular state of con- 
sciousness, similar to a combination. Harmony or 
discord does not, indeed, exist in each separate 

* Colozza, L Hmmaginasione nella Sciensa, Rome, 1900, pp. 
lllfP. 



PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 83 

sound, but only in the relations and sequence of 
sounds — it is a tertium quid. We have heretofore, 
in the discussion of association of ideas, very fre- 
quently represented the states of consciousness as 
fixed elements that approach one another, cohere, 
separate, come together anew, but always unalter- 
able, like atoms. It is not so at all. Consciousness, 
says Titchener, resembles a fresco in which the tran- 
sition between colors is made through all kinds of 
intermediate stages of light and shade. . . . The 
idea of a pen or of an inkwell is not a stable thing 
clearly pictured like the pen or inkwell itself. More 
than any one else, William James has insisted on 
this point in his theory of "fringes" of states of 
consciousness. Outside of the given instances we 
could find many others among the various manifes- 
tations of the mental life. It is not, then, at all 
chimerical to assume in psychology an equivalent of 
chemical combination. In a complex state there is, 
in addition to the component elements, the result 
of their reciprocal influences, of their varying rela- 
tions. Too often we forget this resultant. 

At bottom the ideal is an individual concept. If 
objection is offered that an ideal common to a large 
mass of men is a fact of common experience (e. g., 
idealists and realists in the fine arts, and even more 
so religious, moral, social and political concepts, 
etc.), the answer is easy: There are families of 
minds. They have a common ideal because, in cer- 
tain matters, they have the same way of feeling and 
thinking. It is not a transcendental idea that unites 



84 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

them; but this result occurs because from their 
common aspirations the collective ideal becomes dis- 
engaged; it is, in scholastic terminology, a uni- 
sersale post rem. 

The ideal conception is the first moment of the 
creative act, which is not yet battling with the con- 
ditions of the actual. It is only the internal vision 
of an individual mind that has not yet been projected 
externally with a form and body. We know how 
the passage from the internal to the external life 
has given rise among inventors to deceptions and 
complaints. Such was the imaginative construction 
that could not, unchanged, enter into its mould and 
become a reality. 

Let us now examine the various forms of this 
coagulating^ principle in advancing from the lowest 
to the highest, from the unity vaguely anticipated to 
the absolute and tyrannical masterful unity. Fol- 
lowing a method that seems to me best adapted for 
these ill-explained questions I shall single out only 
the principal forms, which I have reduced to three 
— the unstable, the organic or middle, and the ex- 
treme or semi-morbid unity. 

( I ) The unstable form has its starting point di- 
rectly and immediately in the reproductive imagi- 

* This unifying, organizing, creative principle is so active in 
certain minds that, placed face to face with any work what- 
ever — novel, picture, monument, scientific or philosophic theory, 
financial or political institution — while believing that they are 
merely considering it, they spontaneously remake it. This 
characteristic of their psychology distinguishes them from mere 
critics. 



PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 85 

nation without creation. It assembles its elements 
somewhat by chance and stitches together the bits 
of our life; it ends only in beginnings, in attempts. 
The unity-principle is a momentary disposition, vac- 
illating and changing without cessation according 
to the external impressions or modifications of our 
vital conditions and of our humor. By way of ex- 
ample let us recall the state of the day-dreamer 
building castles in the air; the delirious construc- 
tions of the insane, the inventions of the child fol- 
lowing all the fluctuations of chance, of its caprice; 
the half -coherent dreams that seem to the dreamer 
to contain a creative germ. In consequence of the 
extreme frailty of the synthetic principle the creative 
imagination does not succeed in accomplishing its 
task and remains in a condition intermediate between 
simple association of ideas and creation proper. 

(2) The organic or middle form may be given as 
the type of the unifying power. Ultimately it re- 
duces itself to attention and presupposes nothing 
more, because, thanks to the process of "localiza- 
tion,'' which is the essential mark of attention, it 
makes itself a center of attraction, grouping about 
the leading idea the images, associations, judgments, 
tendencies and voluntary efforts. "Inspiration,'* the 
poet Grillparzer used to say, "is a concentration of 
which, for the time being, should represent the 
all the forces and capacities upon a single point 
world rather than enclose it. The reinforcement of 
the state of the mind comes from the fact that its 
several powers, instead of spreading themselves 



86 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

over the whole world, are contained within the 
bounds of a single object, touch one another, recip- 
rocally help and reinforce each other.'*^ What the 
poet here maintains as regards esthetics only is ap- 
plicable to all the organic forms of creation — ^that 
is to those ruled by an immanent logic, and, like 
them, resembling works of Nature. 

In order to leave no doubt as to the identity of 
attention and imaginative synthesis, and in order 
to show that it is normally the true unifying princi- 
ple, we offer the following remarks: 

Attention is at times spontaneous, natural, with- 
out effort, simply dependent on the interest that a 
thing excites in us — lasting as long as it holds us 
in subjection, then ceasing entirely. Again, it is 
voluntary, artificial, an imitation of the other, pre- 
carious and intermittent, maintained with effort — 
in a word, laborious. The same is true of the 
imagination. The moment of inspiration is ruled 
by a perfect and spontaneous unity; its imperson- 
ality approaches that of the forces of Nature. Then 
appears the personal moment, the detailed working 
and long, painful, intermittent resumptions, the mis- 
erable turns of which so many inventors have de- 
scribed. The analogy between the two cases seems 
to me incontestable. 

Next let us note that psychologists always adduce 
the same examples when they wish to illustrate on 
the one hand, the processes of the persistent, tenac- 
ious attention, and, on the other hand, the develop- 

* Oelzelt-Newin, op. cit., p. 49. 



PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 87 

mental labor without which creative work does not 
come to pass: * 'Genius is only long patience," the 
saying of Newton; "always thinking of it/' and like 
expressions of d'Alembert, Helmholtz and others, 
because in the one case as in the other the funda- 
mental condition is the existence of a fixed, ever- 
active idea, notwithstanding its relaxations and its 
incessant disappearances into the unconscious with 
return to consciousness. 

(3) The extreme form, which from its nature 
is semi-morbid, becomes in its highest degree plainly 
pathological; the unifying principle changes to a 
condition of obsession. 

The normal state of our mind is a plurality of 
states of consciousness (polyideism). Through as- 
sociation there is a radiation in every direction. In 
this totality of coexisting images no one long occu- 
pies first place; it is driven away by others, which 
are displaced in turn by still others emerging from 
the penumbra. On the contrary, in attention (rela- 
tive monoideism) a single image retains first place 
for a long time and tends to have the same import- 
ance again. Finally, in a condition of obsession 
(absolute monoideism) the fixed idea defies all riv- 
alry and rules despotically. Many inventors have 
suffered painfully this tyranny and have vainly 
struggled to break it. The fixed idea, once settled, 
does not permit anything to dislodge it save for the 
moment and with much pain. Even then it is dis- 
placed only apparently, for it persists in the uncon- 
scious life where it has thrust its deep roots. 



88 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

At this stage the unifying principle, although it 
can act as a stimulus for creation, is no longer nor- 
mal. Consequently, a natural question arises : 
Wherein is there a difference between the obsession 
of the inventor and the obsession of the insane, who 
most generally destroys in place of creating ? 

The nature of fixeH ideas has greatly occupied 
contemporary alienists. For other reasons and in 
their own way they, too, have been led to divide 
obsession into two classes, the intellectual and 
emotional, according as the idea or the affective 
state predominates. Then they have been led to 
ask: Which of these two elements is the primitive 
one? For some it is the idea. For others, and it 
seems that these are the more numerous, the affec- 
tive state is in general the primary fact ; the obses- 
sion always rests on a basis of morbid emotion and 
in a retention of impressions.^ 

But whatever opinion we may hold on this point, 
the difficulty of establishing a dividing line between 
the two forms of obsession above mentioned re- 
mains the same. Are there characters peculiar to 
each one? 

It has been said : "The physiologically fixed idea 
is normally longed for, often sought, in all cases 
accepted, and it does not break the unity of the 
self." It does not impose itself fatally on conscious- 
ness ; the individual knows the value thereof, knows 

* Pitres et R^gis, S4miiologie des obsessions et des idees fixes, 
1878. S6glas, LeQons cliniques sur les maladies mentales, 1895. 
Raymond et Janet, Nevroses et idees fixes, 1898 



PRINCIPLE OF UNITY. 89 

where it leads him, and adapts his conduct to its 
requirements. For example, Christopher Columbus. 

The pathological fixed idea is "parasitic," auto- 
matic, discordant, irresistible. Obsession is only a 
special case of psychic disintegration, a kind of 
doubling of consciousness. The individual becomes 
a person "possessed," whose self has been confis- 
cated for the sake of the fixed idea, and whose sub- 
mission to his situation is wrought with pain. 

In spite of this parallel the distinguishing criterion 
between the two is very vague, because from the 
sane to the delirious idea the transitions are very 
numerous. We are obliged to recognize "that with 
certain workers — who are rather taken up with the 
elaboration of their work, and not masters direct- 
ing it, quitting it, and resuming it at their pleas- 
ure — an artistic, scientific, or mechanical conception 
succeeds in haunting the mind, imposing itself upon 
it even to the extent of causing suffering." In real- 
ity, pure psychology is unable to discover a positive 
difference between obsession leading to creative 
work and the other forms, because in both cases 
the mental mechanism is, at bottom, the same. The 
criterion must be sought elsewhere. For that we 
must go out of the internal world and proceed 
objectively. We must judge the fixed idea not in 
itself but by its effects. What does it produce in 
the practical, esthetic, scientific, moral, social, re- 
ligious field? It is of value according to its fruits. 
If objection be made to this change of front we 
may, in order to stick to a strictly psychological 



90 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

point of view, state that it is certain that as soon 
as it passes beyond a middle point, which it is 
difficult to determine, the fixed idea profoundly 
troubles the mechanism of the mind. In imagina- 
tive persons this is not rare, which partly explains 
why the pathological theory of genius (of which we 
shall speak later) has been able to rally so many to 
its support and to allege so many facts in its favor. 



SECOND PART 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
IMAGINATION. 



CHAPTER I 

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS 

Up to this point the imagination has been treated 
analytically only. This process alone would give 
us but a very imperfect idea of its essentially con- 
crete and lively nature were we to stop here. So 
this part continues the subject in another shape. I 
shall attempt to follow the imagination in its ascend- 
ing development from the lowest to the most com- 
plex forms, from the animal to the human infant, 
to primitive man, thence to the highest modes of 
invention. It will thus be exhibited in the inex- 
haustible variety of its manifestations which the 
abstract and simplifying process of analysis does 
not permit us to suspect. 



I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of 
animals, not only because the question is much in- 
volved but also because it is hardly liable to a posi- 
tive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and 
doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified 
and authentic material, but it still remains to inter- 
pret them. As soon as we begin to conjecture we 



94 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all 
anthropomorphism. 

The question has been formulated, even if not 
treated, with much system by Romanes in his 
Mental Evolution in Animals.^ Taking "imagina- 
tion" in its broadest sense, he recognizes four 
stages : 

1. Provoked revival of images. For example, 
the sight of an orange reminds one of its taste. 
This is a low form of memory, resting on asso- 
ciation by contiguity. It is met with very far down 
in the animal scale, and the author furnishes abun- 
dant proof of it. 

2. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls 
up an absent object. This is a higher form of 
memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc., which 
fact explains the mistrustful sagacity of wild ani- 
mals. At night, the distant baying of a hound stops 
the fox in his course, because all the dangers he 
has undergone are represented in his mind. 

These two stages do not go beyond memory pure 
and simple, i. e., reproductive imagination. The 
other two constitute the higher imagination. 

3. The capacity of associating absent images, 
without suggestion derived from without, through 
an internal working of the mind. It is the lower 
and primitive form of the creative imagination, 
which may be called a passive synthesis. In order 
to establish its existence, Romanes reminds us that 
dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a 

» Chapter X. 



IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS. 95 

large number of birds; that certain animals, espe- 
cially in anger, seem to be subject to delusions and 
pursued by phantoms; and lastly, that in some 
there is produced a condition resembling nostalgia, 
expressing itself in a violent desire to return to 
former haunts, or in a wasting away resulting from 
the absence of accustomed persons and things. All 
these facts, especially the latter, can hardly be 
explained without a vivid recollection of the images 
of previous life. 

4. The highest stage consists of intentionally 
reuniting images in order to make novel combina- 
tions from them. This may be called an active 
synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is 
this sometimes found in the animal kingdom? 
Romanes very clearly replies, no; and not without 
offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, 
there must first be capacity for abstraction, and, 
without speech, abstraction is very weak. One of 
the conditions for creative imagination is thus 
wanting in the higher animals. 

We here come to one of those critical moments, 
so frequent in animal psychology, when one asks, 
Is this character exclusively human, or is it found 
in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been pos- 
sible to support a theory opposing that of Romanes. 
Certain animals, says Oelzelt-Newin, fulfill all the 
conditions necessary for creative imagination — 
subtle senses, good memory, and appropriate emo- 
tional states.^ This assertion is perhaps true, but 

*0p. cit., Appendix. 



g6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent to saying that 
the thing is possible; it does not establish it as a 
fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the condi- 
tions for creative imagination are present here, 
since we have just shown that there is lack of 
abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits 
his study to birds and the construction of their 
nests, maintains, against Wallace and others, that 
nest-building requires "the mysterious synthesis of 
representations." We might with equal reason 
bring the instances of other building animals (bees, 
wasps, white ants, the common ants, beavers, etc.). 
It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an 
anticipated representation of their architecture. 
Shall we say that it is "instinctive," consequently 
unconscious? At least, may we not group under 
this head, changes and adaptations to new condi- 
tions which these animals succeed in applying to 
the typical plans of their construction? Observa- 
tions and even systematic experiments (like those 
of Huber, Forel, et al.) show that, reduced to the 
alternative of the impossibility of building or the 
modification of their habits, certain animals modify 
them. Judging from this, how refuse them inven- 
tion altogether? This contradicts in no way the 
very just reservation of Romanes. It is sufficient 
to remark that abstraction or dissociation has stages, 
that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelli- 
gence. If, in the absence of words, the logic of 
concepts is forbidden it, there yet remains the logic 



IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS. 97 

of images,^ which is sufficient for slight innova- 
tions. In a word, animals can invent according to 
the extent that they can dissociate. 

In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness 
attribute a creative power to animals, we must seek 
it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we attribute only 
a mediocre importance to a manifestation that 
might very well be the proper form of animal fancy. 
It is purely motor, and expresses itself through the 
various kinds of play. 

Although play may be as old as mankind, its 
psychology dates only from the nineteenth century. 
We have already seen that there are three theories 
concerning its nature — it is "expenditure of super- 
fluous activity," "a mending, restoring of strength, 
a recuperation," "an apprenticeship, a preliminary 
exercise for the active functions of life and for the 
development of our natural gifts."^ The last posi- 
tion, due to Groos, does not rule out the other two; 
it holds the first valid for the young, the second for 
adults; but it comprehends both in a more general 
explanation. 

'For a more detailed study of this subject, the reader is 
referred to the author's Evolution of General Ideas (English 
trans., Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago), chapter I, sec- 
tion I. 

*A rather extended study of the subject by H. A. Carr will 
be found in the Investigations of the Department of Psychology 
and Education of the University of Colorado, vol. I, Number 2, 
1902. The late Professor Arthur Allin devoted much time to 
the investigation of play. See his brief article entitled 
*'Play" in the University of Colorado Studies, vol. I, 1902, 
pp. 58-73. (Tr.) 



98 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Let US leave this doctrinal question in order to 
call attention to the variety and richness of form 
of play in the animal world. In this respect the 
aforementioned book of Groos is a rich mine of 
evidence to which I would refer the reader. I limit 
myself to summing up his classification. He dis- 
tinguishes nine classes of play, viz. : ( i ) Those 
that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials 
at hazard without immediate end, often giving the 
animal a certain knowledge of the properties of the 
external world. This is the introduction to an 
experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the 
brood of animals. (2) Movements or changes of 
place executed of their own accord — a very general 
fact as is proven by the incessant movements of 
butterflies, flies, birds, and even fishes, which often 
appear to play in the water rather than to seek prey ; 
the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free space. 
(3) Mimicry of hunting, i. e., playing with a living 
or dead prey : the dog and cat following moving 
objects, a ball, feather, etc. (4) Mimic battles, 
teasing and fighting without anger. (5) Archi- 
tectural art, revealing itself especially in the build- 
ing of nests: certain birds ornament them with 
shining objects (stones, bits of glass), by a kind 
of anticipation of the esthetic feeling. (6) Doll- 
play is universal in mankind, whether civilized or 
savage. Groos believes he has found its equivalent 
in certain animals. (7) Imitation through pleasure, 
so familiar in monkeys (grimaces) ; singing-birds 
which counterfeit the voices of a large number of 



IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS. 99 

beasts. (8) Curiosity, which is the only mental 
play one meets in animals — the dog watching, from 
a wall or window, what is going on in the street. 
(9) Love-plays, "which differ from the others in 
that they are not mere exercises, but have in view 
a real object." They have been well-known since 
Darwin's time, he attributing to them an esthetic 
value which has been denied by Wallace, Tylor, 
Lloyd Morgan, Wallaschek, and Groos. 

Let us recapitulate in thought the immense 
quantity of motor expressions included in these nine 
categories and let us note that they have the fol- 
lowing characters in common: They are grouped 
in combinations that are often new and unforeseen; 
they are not a repetition of daily life, acts necessary 
for self-preservation. At one time the movements 
are combined simultaneously (exhibition of beau- 
tiful colors), again (and most often) successively 
(amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission 
of noises, sounds or songs) ; but, under one form or 
another, there- is creation, invention. Here, the 
imagination acts in its purely motor character; it 
consists of a small number of images that become 
translated into actions, and serve as a center for 
their grouping; perhaps even the image itself is 
hardly conscious, so that all is limited to a spon- 
taneous production and a collection of motor phe- 
nomena. 

It will doubtless be said that this form of imagi- 
nation belongs to a very shallow, poor psychology. 
It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary that imagi- 



lOO THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

native production be found reduced to its simplest 
expression in animals, and the motor form must be 
its special characteristic mark. It cannot have any 
others for the following reasons: incapacity for 
the work that necessarily precedes abstraction or 
dissociation, breaking into bits the data of expe- 
rience, making them raw material for the future 
construction; lack of images, and especially fewness 
of possible combinations of images. This last point 
is proven alike from the data of animal psychology 
and of comparative anatomy. We know that the 
nervous elements in the brain serving as connections 
between sensory regions — whether one conceive of 
them as centers (Flechsig), or as bundles of com- 
misural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke) — are hardly 
outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a 
mediocre development in the higher forms. 

By way of corroboration of the foregoing, let us 
compare the higher animals with young children: 
this comparison is not based on a few far-fetched 
analogies, but in a thorough resemblance in nature. 
Man, during the first years of his life, has a brain 
but slightly differentiated, especially as regards 
connections, a very poor supply of images, a very 
weak capacity for abstraction. His intellectual 
development is much inferior to that of reflex, 
instinctive, impulsive, and imitative movements. In 
consequence of this predominance of the motor 
system, the simple and imperfect images, in chil- 
dren as in animals, tend to be immediately changed 
into movements. Even most of their inventions in 



IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS. lOI 

play are greatly inferior to those enumerated above 
under nine distinct heads. 

A serious argument in favor of the prevalence 
of imagination of the motor type in the child is 
furnished by the principal part taken by movements 
in infantile insanity: a remark made by many 
alienists. The first stage of this madness, they say, 
is found in the convulsions that are not merely a 
physical ailment, but "a muscular deHrium." The 
disturbance of the automatic and instinctive func- 
tions of the child is so often associated with mus- 
cular disturbances that at this age the mental dis- 
orders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers 
situated below those parts that later assume the 
labor of analysis and of imagination. The disturb- 
ances are in the primary centers of organization and 
according to the symptoms lack those analytic or 
constructive qualities, those ideal forms, that we 
find in adult insanity. If we descend to the lowest 
stage of human life — to the baby — we see that 
insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of 
a muscular group acting on external objects. The 
insane baby bites, kicks, and these symptoms are 
the external measure of the degree of its madness.^ 
Has not chorea itself been called a muscular in- 
sanity ? 

Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a 
sensorial madness (illusions, hallucinations) ; but 
by reason of its feeble intellectual development the 

*Hack Tuke, ** Insanity of Children,*' in Dictionary of Psy- 
chological Medicine. 



102 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

delirium causes a disorder of movements rather 
than of images; its insane imagination is above all 
a motor insanity. 

To hold that the creative imagination belonging 
to animals consists of new combinations of move- 
ments is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless, I 
do not believe that it is merely a mental form with- 
out foundation, if we take into account the fore- 
going facts. I consider it rather as a point in favor 
of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular 
instance in which the original form of creation is 
shown bare. If we wanted to discover it, it would 
be necessary to seek it where it is reduced to the 
greatest simplicity — in the animal world. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE 
CHILD 

At what age, in what form, under what condi- 
tions does the creative imagination make its appear- 
ance? It is impossible to answer this question, 
which, moreover, has no justification. For the 
creative imagination develops little by little out of 
pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not 
by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is 
very slow on account of causes both organic and 
psychological. 

We could not dwell long on the organic causes 
without falling into tiresome repetitions. The new- 
born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed 
diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex 
life itself is not complete in him, and the cortico- 
motor system only hinted at; the sensory centers 
are undifferentiated, the associational systems re- 
main isolated for a long time after birth. We have 
given above Flechsig's observation on this point. 

The psychological causes reduce themselves to 
the necessity for a consolidation of the primary and 



104 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

secondary operations of the mind, without which 
the creative imagination cannot take form. To be 
precise, we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four 
epochs in the mental development of the child : ( i ) 
affective (rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures 
and pains, simple motor adaptations) ; (2) and (3) 
objective, in which the author establishes two 
grades, (a) appearance of special senses, of mem- 
ory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; 
(b) complex memory, complicated movements, 
offensive activities, rudimentary will; (4) subjec- 
tive or final (conscious thought, constitutive will, 
ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as 
approximately correct, the moment of imagination 
must be assigned to the third period (the second 
stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the 
sufficient and necessary conditions for its origina- 
tion and for its rise above pure reproduction. 

Whatever the propitious age may be, the study 
of the child-imagination is not without difficulties. 
In order to enter into the child-mind, we must 
become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an 
interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much 
false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or 
too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children 
studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. 
The result is that the development of their imagina- 
tion is rarely unhampered and complete ; for as soon 
as their fancy passes the middle level, the rationaliz- 
ing education of parents and teachers is eager to 
master and control it. In truth it gives its full 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. IO5 

measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth 
only among primitive peoples. With us it is 
checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, 
which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, 
children are not equally well-suited for this study; 
we must make a distinction between the imaginative 
and non-imaginative, and the latter should be elimi- 
nated. 

When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, 
observation shows from the start sufficiently dis- 
tinct varieties, different orientations of the imagina- 
tion depending on intellectual causes, such as the 
predominance of visual or acoustic or tactile-motor 
images making for mechanical invention; or de- 
pendent on emotional causes, that is, of character, 
according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, 
retired, healthy, sickly, etc. 

If we now attempt to follow the development of 
the child-imagination, we may distinguish four 
principal stages, without assigning them, otherwise, 
a rigorous chronological order. 

I. The first stage consists of the passage from 
passive to creative imagination. Its history would 
be long were we to include all the hybrid forms that 
are made up partly of memories, partly of new 
groupings, being at the same time repetition and 
construction. Even in the adult, they are very fre- 
quent. I know a person who is always afraid of 
being smothered, and for this reason urgently asks 
that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck : 
this odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither 



I06 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

to memory nor to imagination. This particular 
case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of 
the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise 
its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other 
facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the 
imagination's development, limiting ourselves to 
two forms of the psychic life — perception and illu- 
sion. The necessary presence of the image in these 
two forms has been so often proven by contem- 
porary psychology that a few words to recall this 
to mind will be sufficient. 

There seems to be a radical difference between 
perception, which seizes reality, and imagination. 
Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in order 
to rise above sensation to perception, there must be 
a synthesis of images. To put it more simply, two 
elements are required — one, coming from without, 
the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and 
the sensory centers, which becomes translated in 
consciousness through the vague state that goes by 
the name ^'sensation"; the other, coming from with- 
in, adds to the sensations present appropriate images, 
remnants of former experiences. So that perception 
requires an apprenticeship; we must feel, then im- 
perfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well. 
The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total 
fact : and in the operation we call "perceiving,'* that 
is, apprehending an object directly, a part only of 
the object is represented. 

This, however, does not go beyond reproductive 
imagination. The decisive step is taken in illusion. 



J 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. IO7 

We know that illusion has as a basis and support a 
modification of the external senses which are meta- 
morphosed, amplified by an immediate construction 
of the mind : a branch of a tree becomes a serpent, 
a distant noise seems the music of an orchestra. 
Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since 
there is no perception but may undergo this erron- 
eous transformation, and it is produced by the same 
mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms. 
In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and 
the representative element is secondary; in illusion, 
we have just the opposite condition : what one takes 
as perceived is merely imagined — the imagination 
assumes the principal role. Illusion is the type of 
the transitional forms, of the mixed cases, that con- 
sist of constructions made up of memories, without 
being, in the strict sense, creations. 

2. The creative imagination asserts itself with 
its peculiar characteristics only in the second stage, 
in the form of animism or the attributing of life 
to everything. This turn of the mind is already 
known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. 
As the state of the child's mind at that period 
resembles that which in primitive man creates 
myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. 
Works on psychology abound in facts demonstrat- 
ing that this primitive tendency to attribute life and 
even personality to everything is a necessary phase 
that the mind must undergo — long or short in dura- 
tion, rich or poor in inventions, according to the 
level of the child's imagination. His attitude to- 



I08 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

wards his dolls is the common example of this state, 
and also the best example, because it is universal, 
being found in all countries without exception, 
among all races of men. It is needless to pile up 
facts on an uncontroverted point.^ Two will suf- 
fice; I choose them on account of their extrava- 
gance, which shows that at this particular moment 
animism, in certain minds, can dare anything. "One 
little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived 
a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it 
thus : 'Dear old boy W.' Another little boy well 
on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, hap- 
pened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed 
an angle, thus: L^ He instantly saw the resem- 
blance to the sedentary human form, and said: 
"Oh, he's sitting down." Similarly, when he made 
an F turn the wrong way and then put the correct 
form to the left, thus, F^, he exclaimed. They're 
talking together!' " One of Sully's correspondents 
says: "I had the habit of attributing intelligence 
not only to all living creatures . . . but even 
to stones and manufactured articles. I used to feel 
how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway 
to lie still and only see what was round about. 
When I walked out with a basket for putting 
flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or 
two and carry them out to have a change." 

*One will find a large number of examples in Sully's work, 
Studies of Childhood, Chapter ii, entitled "The Age of Imag- 
ination." Most of the observations given in the present chap- 
ter have been borrowed from this author. 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. IO9 

Let US stop a moment in order to try to determine 
the nature of this strange mental state, all the more 
as we shall meet it again in primitive man, and since 
it presents the creative imagination at its beginning. 

a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an 
image, or group of images, that takes possession of 
consciousness to the exclusion of everything else : — 
it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the 
hypnotized subject, with this sole difference — ^that 
the suggestion does not come from without, from 
another, but from the child itself — it is auto-sug- 
gestion. The stick that the child holds between his 
legs becomes for him an imaginary steed. The 
poverty of his mental development makes all the 
easier this contraction of the field of his conscious- 
ness, which assures the supremacy of the image. 

b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. 
This is an important detail to note, because this 
reality, however tiny, gives objectivity to the imag- 
inary creation and incorporates it with the external 
world. The mechanism is like that which produces 
illusion, but with a stable character excluding cor- 
rection. The child transforms a bit of wood or 
paper into another self, because he perceives only 
the phantom he has created ; that is, the images, not 
the material exciting them, haunt his brain. 

c. Lastly, this creative power investing the image 
with all its attributes of real existence is derived 
from a fundamental fact — the state of belief, i. e., 
adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective 
conditions. It does not come within my province to 



no THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

treat incidentally such a large question. Neglected 
by the older physiology, whose faculty-method in- 
clined it toward this omission, belief or faith has 
recently become the object of numerous studies.^ 
I necessarily limit myself to remarking that but for 
this psychic state, the nature of the imagination is 
totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the 
imagination is the production of a reality of human 
origin, and it succeeds therein only because of the 
faith accompanying the image. 

Representation and belief are not completely 
separated; it is the nature of the image to appear 
at first as a real object. This psychological truth, 
though proven through observation, has made itself 
acceptable only with great difficulty. It has had to 
struggle on the one hand against the prejudices of 
common-sense for which imagination is synonymous 
with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the 
real as non-being to being; on the other hand, 
against a doctrine of the logicians who maintain 
that the idea is at first merely conceived with no 
affirmation of existence or non-existence (appre- 
hensio simplex). This position, legitimate in logic, 
which is an abstract science, is altogether unaccept- 
able in psychology, a concrete science. The psycho- 
logical viewpoint giving the true nature of the 
image has prevailed little by little. Spinoza already 
asserts "that representations considered by them- 

^ Apropos of this subject compare especially the recent 
studies by William James, Varieties of Beligious Experience. 
(Tr.) 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. Ill 

selves contain no errors," and he "denies that it is 
possible to perceive [represent] without affirming." 
More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our sub- 
jective dispositions : Belief does not depend on the 
nature of the idea, but on the manner in which we 
conceive it. Existence is not a quality added to it 
by us; it is founded on habit and is irresistible. 
The difference between fiction and belief consists of 
a feeling added to the latter but not to the former. 
Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a 
psychologist following the experimental method. 
He enumerates very many facts whence he con- 
cludes that imagination is always accompanied by 
an act of belief, but for which fact the more vivid 
the image, the less one would believe it; but just 
the contrary happens — the strong representation 
commands persuasion like sensation itself. Finally, 
Taine treats the subject methodically, by studying 
the nature of the image and its primitive character 
of hallucination.^ At present, I think, there is no 
psychologist who does not regard as proven that 
the image, when it enters consciousness, has two 
moments. During the first, it is objective, appear- 
ing as a full and complete reality; during the 
second, which is definitive, it is deprived of its 
objectivity, reduced to a completely internal event, 
through the effect of other states of consciousness 

* Spinoza, Ethics, II, 49, Scholium; Hume, Human Under- 
standing, Part III, Section VII ft. ; Dugald Stewart, Elements 
of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I, Ch. Ill; Taine, 
On Intelligence, Part II. 



112 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

which oppose and finally annihilate its objective 
character. There is an affirmation, then negation; 
impulse, then inhibition. 

Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude 
of the mind, owes its creative and vivifying power 
to general dispositions of our constitution. Besides 
the intellectual element which is its content, its 
material — the thing affirmed or denied — there are 
tendencies and other affective factors (desire, fear, 
love, etc.) giving the image its intensity, and assur- 
ing it success in the struggle against other states 
of consciousness. There are active faculties that 
we sometimes designate by the name "will,'* under- 
standing by the term, as James says, not only delib- 
erate volition, but all the factors of belief (hope, 
fear, passions, prejudices, sectarian feeling, and so 
forth),^ and this has justly given rise to the truth- 
ful saying that the test of belief is action.^ This 
explains how in love, religion, in the moral life, in 
politics, and elsewhere, belief can withstand the 
logical assaults of the rationalizing intelligence — 
its power is found everywhere. It lasts as long as 
the mind waits and consents; but, as soon as these 
affective and active dispositions disappear in life's 
experience, faith falls with them, leaving in its place 
a form.less content, an empty and dead representa- 
tion. 

After this, is it necessary to remark that belief 

* James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, p. 10. 
' Payot, De la croyance, 139 flf. 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. II3 

depends peculiarly on the motor elements of our 
organization and not on the intellectual? As there 
is no imagination without belief, nor belief without 
imagination, we return by another route to the 
thesis supported in the first part of this essay, that 
creative activity depends on the motor nature of 
images. 

Insofar as concerns the special case of the child, 
the first of the two moments (the affirming) that 
the image undergoes in consciousness is all in all 
for him, the second (the rectifying) is nothing: 
there is hypertrophy of one, atrophy of the other. 
For the adult the contrary is true — in many cases, 
indeed, in consequence of experience and habit, 
the first moment, wherein the image should be 
affirmed as a reality, is only virtual, is literally 
atrophied. We must, however, remark that this 
applies only partially to the ignorant and even less 
to the savage. 

We might, nevertheless, ask ourselves if the 
child's belief in his phantoms is complete, entire, 
absolute, unreserved. Is the stick that he bestrides 
perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, 
that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose 
from, completely deceived? It seems that we must 
rather admit an intermittence, an alteration be- 
tween affirmation and negation. On the one hand, 
the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it dis- 
pleases the child, who is like a devout believer 
whose faith is being broken down. On the other 
hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to 



114 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

time, for without this, rectification could never 
occur — one behef opposes the other or drives it 
away. This second work proceeds little by little, 
but then, under this form, imagination retreats. 

3. The third stage is that of play, which, in 
chronological order, coincides with the one just 
preceding. As a form of creation it is already 
known to us, but in passing from animals to chil- 
dren, it grows in complexity and becomes intel- 
lectualized. It is no longer a simple combination 
of images. 

Play serves two ends — for experimenting: as 
such it is an introduction to knowledge, gives cer- 
tain vague notions concerning the nature of things ; 
for creating: this is its principal function. 

The human child, like the animal, expends itself 
in movements, forms associations new to it, simu- 
lates defence, flight, attack; but the child soon 
passes beyond this lower stage, in order to construct 
by means of images (ideally). He begins by imi- 
tating: this is a physiological necessity, reasons for 
which we shall give later (see chapter iv. infra). 
He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to 
large plans ; but he imitates most in his own person 
and acts, making himself in turn soldier, sailor, 
robber, merchant, coachman, etc. 

To the period of imitation succeed more serious 
attempts — he acts with a ^'spirit of mastery," he is 
possessed by his idea which he tends to realize. 
The personal character of creation is shown in that 
he is really interested only in a work that emanates 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. II5 

from himself and of which he feels himself the 
cause. B. Perez relates that he wanted to give a 
lesson to his nephew, aged three and a half years, 
whose inventions seemed to him very poor. Perez 
scratched in the sand a trench resembling a river, 
planted little branches on both banks, and had water 
flow through it; put a bridge across, and launched 
boats. At each new act the child would remain 
cool, his admiration would always have to be waited 
for. Out of patience, he remarked shortly that 
"this isn't at all entertaining/' The author adds: 
"I believed it useless to persist, and I trampled 
under foot, laughing at myself, my awkward at- 
tempt at a childish construction."^ "I had already 
read it in many a book, but this time I had learned 
from experience that the free initiative of children 
is always superior to the imitations we pretend to 
make for them. In addition, this experience and 
others like it have taught me that their creative 
force is much weaker than has been said.'* 

4. At the fourth stage appears romantic inven- 
tion, which requires a more refined culture, being 
a purely internal, wholly imaginative (i. e., cast in 
images) creation. It begins at about three or 
four years of age. We know the taste of imagina- 
tive children for stories and legends, which they 
have repeated to them until surfeited: in this 
respect they resemble semi-civilized people, who 
listen greedily to rhapsodies for hours at a time, 
experiencing all the emotions appropriate to the 

* B. Perez, Les trois premiires annees de I 'enfant, p. 323. 



Il6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

incidents of the tale. This is the prelude to crea- 
tion, a semi-passive, semi-active state, an apprentice 
period, which will permit them to create in their 
own turn. Thus the first attempts are made with 
reminiscences, and imitated rather than created. 

Of this we find numerous examples in the special 
works. A child of three and a half saw a lame man 
going along a road, and exclaimed : ''Look at that 
poor ole man, mamma, he has dot [got] a bad leg.*' 
Then the romance begins : He was on a high horse ; 
he fell on a rock, struck his poor leg; he will have 
to get some powder to heal it, etc. Sometimes the 
invention is less realistic. A child of three often 
longed to live like a fish in the water, or like a star 
in the sky. Another, aged five years nine months, 
having found a hollow rock, invented a fairy story : 
the hole was a beautiful hall inhabited by brilliant 
mysterious personages, etc.^ 

This form of imagination is not as common as 
the others. It belongs to those whom nature has 
well endowed. It forecasts a development of mind 
above the average. It may even be the sign of an 
inborn vocation and indicate in what direction the 
creative activity will be orientated. 

* Sully, op. cit, pp. 59-61. Compayr€, L'evoluUon intellec- 
tuelle et morale de I* enfant, p. 145. 

(Some time ago the writer was riding on a train, when the 
engine, for some reason or other, began to slow up, jerking, 
puffing, almost groaning, until it finally came to a full stop. 
The groaning continued. A little girl of about three called to 
her mother, "Too-too sick, toQ-too sick," and when finally the 
train started on again, the child was overjoyed that **too-too" 
was well again. (Tr.) ) 



IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD. 1 17 

Let US briefly recall the creative role of the 
imagination in language, through the intervening 
of a factor already studied — thinking by analogy, 
an abundant source of often picturesque metaphors. 
A child called the cork of a bottle "door;" a small 
coin was called by a little American a "baby dollar ;" 
another, seeing the dew on the grass, said, "The 
grass is crying." 

The extension of the meaning of words has been 
studied by Taine, Darwin, Preyer, and others. They 
have shown that its psychological mechanism de- 
pends sometimes on the perception of resemblance, 
again on association by contiguity, processes that 
appear and intermingle in an unforeseen manner. 
Thus, a child applies the word "mambro" at first 
to his nurse, then to a sewing machine that she uses, 
then by analogy to an organ that he sees on the 
street adorned with a monkey, then to his toys 
representing animals.^ We have elsewhere given 
more similar cases, where we perceive the funda- 
mental difference between thought by imagery and 
rational thought. 

To conclude: At this period the imagination is 
the master-faculty and the highest form of intel- 
lectual development. It works in two directions, 
one principal — it creates plays, invents romances, 
and extends language; the other secondary — it 
contains a germ of thought and ventures a fanciful 
explanation of the world which can not yet be con- 
ceived according to abstract notions and laws. 

» Sully, op. eit., p. 164. 



CHAPTER III 



PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF 
MYTHS 

We come now to a unique period in the history 
of the development of the imagination — its golden 
age. In primitive man, still confined in savagery 
or just starting toward civilization, it reaches its 
full bloom in the creation of myths; and we are 
rightly astonished that psychologists, obstinately 
attached to esthetics, have neglected such an im- 
portant form of activity, one so rich in information 
concerning the creative imagination. Where, in- 
deed, find more favorable conditions for knowing it ? 

Man, prior to civilization, is a purely imaginative 
being; that is, the imagination marks the summit of 
his intellectual development. He does not go 
beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as 
in animals, nor a transitory phase as in the civilized 
child who rapidly advances to the age of reason; 
it is a fixed state, permanent and lasting throughout 
life.^ It is there revealed to us in its entire spon- 

* Primitive man has been defined as * ' he for whom sensuous 
data and images surpass in importance rational concepts.'' 
From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and 
artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human 



CREATION OF MYTHS. II9 

taneity: it has free rein; it can create without 
imitation or tradition; it is not imprisoned in any 
conventional form; it is sovereign. As primitive 
man has knowledge neither of nature nor of its 
laws, he does not hesitate to embody the most sense- 
less imaginings flitting through his brain. The 
world is not, for him, a totality of phenomena 
subject to laws, and nothing limits or hinders him. 

This working of the pure imagination, left to 
itself and unadulterated by the intrusion and 
tyranny of rational elements, becomes translated 
into one form — the creation of myths; an anony- 
mous, unconscious work, which, as long as its rule 
lasts, is sufficient in every way, comprehends every- 
thing — religion, poetry, history, science, philosophy, 
law. 

Myths have the advantage of being the incarna- 
tion of pure imagination, and, moreover, they per- 
mit psychologists to study them objectively. Thanks 
to the labors of the nineteenth century, they offer 
an almost inexhaustible content. While past ages 
forgot, misunderstood, disfigured, and often des- 
pised myths as aberrations of the human mind, as 
unworthy of an hour's attention, it is no longer 
necessary in our time to show their interest and 
importance, even for psychology, which, however, 
has not as yet drawn all the benefit possible from 
them. 

individual is not enough for such a determination; we must 
also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social 
environment. 



I20 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

But before commencing the psychological study 
of the genesis and formation of myths considered 
as an objective emanation of the creative imagina- 
tion, we must briefly summarize the hypotheses at 
present offered for their origin. We find two prin- 
cipal ones — the one, etymological, genealogical, or 
linguistic ; the other, ethno-psychological, or anthro- 
pological.^ 

The first, whose principal though not sole cham- 
pion is Max Miiller, holds that myths are the result 
of a disease of language — words become things, 
''nomina numina.'^ This transformation is the 
effect of two principal linguistic causes — (a) Poly- 
nomy; several words for one thing. Thus the sun 
is designated by more than twenty names in the 
Vedas; Apollo, Phaethon, Hercules are three per- 
sonifications of the sun; Varoima (night) and 
Varna (death) express at first the same conception, 
and have become two distinct deities. In short, 
every word tends to become an entity having its 
attributes and its legends. (b) Homonomy, a 
single word for several things. The same adjective, 
"shining," refers to the sun, a fountain, spring, etc. 
This is another source of confusion. Let us also 
add metaphors taken literally, plays upon words, 
wrong construction, etc. 

The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in 

*Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spen- 
cer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (The Evolution of the 
Idea of God, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic 
concepts from a single origin — the worship of the dead. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. 121 

the formation of myths, words represent scarcely 
five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of this 
assertion, the purely philological explanation re- 
mains without value for psychology: it is neither 
true nor false — it does not solve the question; it 
merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a 
vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting 
it, nothing would change. Moreover, Max Miiller 
himself has recently recognized this.^ 

The anthropological theory, much more general 
than the foregoing, penetrates further to psycho- 
logical origins — it leads us to the first advances of 
the human mind. It regards the myth not as an 
accident of primitive life, but as a natural function, 
a mode of activity proper to man during a certain 
period of his development. Later, the mythic crea- 
tions seem absurd, often immoral, because they are 
survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and conse- 
crated through tradition, habits, and respect for 
antiquity. According to the definition that seems 
to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is 
"the psychological objectification of man in all the 
phenomena that he can perceive."^ It is a humani- 
zation of nature according to processes peculiar to 
the imagination. 

* * * When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in ita 
inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a dis- 
ease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally 
so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For 
me, language and thought are inseparable." Nouvelles 4tudes 
de Mythologie, p. 51. 

' Vignoli, Mito e Sciema, p. 27. 



122 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not 
seem so to me, provided we accept the first as only 
a partial explanation. In any event, both schools 
agree on one point important for us — that the 
material for myths is furnished by the observation 
of natural phenomena, including the great events 
of human life : birth, sickness, death, etc. This is 
the objective factor. The creation of myths has its 
explanation in the nature of human imagination — 
this is the subjective factor. We can not deny that 
most works on mythology have a very decided 
tendency to give the greater importance to the first 
factor; in which respect they need a little psychol- 
ogy. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, 
the moon and stars, winds and storms, have their 
effect also, we may suppose, on m.onkeys, elephants, 
and other animals supposedly the most intelligent. 
Have they inspired myths ? Just the opposite : "the 
surprising monotony of the ideas that the various 
races have made final causes of phenomena, of the 
origin and destiny of man, whence it results that 
the numberless myths are reduced to a very small 
number of types,"^ shows that it is the human 
imagination that takes the principal part and that 
it is on the whole perhaps not so rich as we are 
pleased to say — that it is even very poor, compared 
to the fecundity of nature. 

Let us now study the psychology of this creative 
activity, reducing it to these two questions: How 

*Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew 
Lang's Myth, Bitual, and 'Religion. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. I23 

are myths formed ? What line does their evolution 
follow ? 



The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the 
work that causes its rise, may theoretically, and for 
the sake of facilitating analysis, be regarded as two 
principal moments — that of creation proper, and 
that of romantic invention. 

a. The moment of creation presupposes two 
inseparable operations which, however, we have to 
describe separately. The first consists of attributing 
life to all things, the second of assigning qualities 
to all things. 

Animating everything, that is attributing life 
and action to everything, representing everything to 
one's self as living and acting — even mountains, 
rocks, and other objects (seemingly) incapable of 
movement. Of this inborn and irresistible tendency 
there are so many facts in proof that an enumera- 
tion is needless : it is the rule. The evidence gath- 
ered by ethnologists, mythologists, and travelers fill 
large volumes. This state of mind does not par- 
ticularly belong to long-past ages. It is still in 
existence, it is contemporary, and if we would see 
it with our own eyes it is not at all necessary to 
plunge into virgin countries, for there are frequent 
reversions even in civilized lands. On the whole, 
says Tylor, it must be regarded as conceded that to 
the lower races of humanity the sun and stars, the 
trees and rivers, the winds and clouds, become 



124 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

animated creatures living like men and beasts, ful- 
filling their special function in creation — or rather 
that what the human eye can reach is only the 
instrument or the matter of which some gigantic 
being, like a man, hidden behind the visible things, 
makes use. The grounds on which such ideas are 
based cannot be regarded as less than a poetic fancy 
or an ill-understood metaphor; they depend on a 
vast philosophy of nature, certainly rude and primi- 
tive, but coherent and serious. 

The second operation of the mind, inseparable, 
as we have said, from the first, attributes to these 
imaginary beings various qualities, but all impor- 
tant to man. They are good or bad, useful or 
hurtful, weak or powerful, kind or cruel. One 
remains stupefied before the swarming of these 
numberless genii whom no natural phenomenon, no 
act of life, no form of sickness escapes, and these 
beliefs remain unbroken even among the tribes that 
are in contact with old civilizations.^ Primitive 
man lives and moves among the ceaseless phantoms 
of his own imagination.^ 

*Oii this point consult a work very rich in information, 
W. Crooke's book, Popular Beligion and Folk-lore of Northern 
India, 1897. 

'"The Indian traversing the MontafSa never feels himself 
alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature 
to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of 
the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the 
bird— everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew — for 
him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in 
its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket 



CREATION OF MYTHS. I25 

Lastly, the psychological mechanism of the crea- 
tive moment is very simple. It depends on a single 
factor previously studied — thinking by analogy. It 
is a matter first of all — and this is important — of 
conceiving beings analogous to ourselves, cast in 
our mould, cut after our pattern; that is, feeling 
and acting; then qualifying them and determining 
them according to the attributes of our own nature. 
But the logic of images, very dififerent from that of 
reason, concludes an objective resemblance; it re- 
gards as alike, what seem alike; it attributes to an 
internal linking of images, the validity of an objec- 
tive connection between things. Whence arises the 
discord between the imagined world and the world 
of reality. "Analogies that for us are only fancies 
were for the man of past ages real" (Tylor). 

b. In the genesis of myths, the second moment 
is that of fanciful invention. Entities take form; 
they have a history and adventures: they become 
the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry 
imagination do not reach the second period. Thus, 
the religion of the Romans peopled the universe 
with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, 
no act, no detail, but had its own presiding genius. 
There was one for germinating grain, for sprouting 
grain, for grain in flower, for blighted grain; for 

under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more 
closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where 
miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink 
his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. 
The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by 
name. ' ' Monnier, Des Andes au Para, p. 300. 



126 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a 
myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism 
arrested at its first stage; abstraction has killed 
imagination. 

Who created those legends and tales of adventure 
constituting the subject-matter of mythology? 
Probably inspired individuals, priests or prophets. 
They came perhaps from dreams, hallucinations, 
insane attacks — they are derived from several 
sources. Whatever their origin, they are the work 
of imaginative minds par excellence (we shall study 
them later) who, confronted with any event what- 
ever, must, because of their nature, construct a 
romance. 

Besides analogy, this imaginative creation has as 
its principal source the associational form already 
described under the name "constellation." We 
know that it is based on the fact that, in certain 
cases, the arousing of an im.age-group is the result 
of a tendency prevailing at a given instant over 
several that are possible. This operation has al- 
ready been expounded theoretically with individual 
examples in support.^ But in order to gauge its 
importance, we must see it act in large masses. 
Myths allow us to do this. Ordinarily they have 
been studied in their historical development accord- 
ing to their geographical distribution or ethnic char- 
acter. If we proceed otherwise, if we consider only 
their content — i. e., the very few themes upon which 
the human imagination has labored, such as celestial 

» See Part I, Chapter IV. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. I27 

phenomena, terrestrial disturbances, floods, the 
origin of the universe, of man, etc. — ^we are sur- 
prised at the wonderful richness of variety. What 
diversity in the solar myths, or those of creation, 
of fire, of water! These variations are due to 
multiple causes, which have orientated the imagi- 
nation now in one direction, now in another. Let 
us mention the principal ones : Racial character- 
istics — whether the imagination is clear or mobile, 
poor or exuberant; the manner of living — totally 
savage, or on a level of civilization; the physical 
environment — external nature cannot be reflected 
in the brain of a Hindoo in the same way as in 
that of a Scandinavian; and lastly, that assemblage 
of considerable and unexpected causes grouped 
under the term "chance." 

The variable combinations of these different 
factors, with the predominance of one or the other, 
explain the multiplicity of the imaginative concep- 
tions of the world, in contrast to the unity and 
simplicity of scientific conceptions. 

II 

The form of imagination now occupying our 
attention by reason of its non-individual, anony- 
mous, collective character, attains a long develop- 
ment that we may follow in its successive phases 
of ascent, climax, and decline. To begin with, is it 
necessarily inherent in the human mind ? Are there 
races or groups of men totally devoid of myths? 
which is a slightly different question from that 



128 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

usually asked, "Are there tribes totally devoid of 
religious thoughts?" Although it is very doubtful 
that there are such now, it is probable that there 
were in the beginning, when man had scarcely left 
the brute level — at least if we agree with Vignoli^ 
that we already find in the higher animals embry- 
onic forms of animism. 

In any event, mythic creation appears early. We 
can infer this from the signs of puerility of certain 
legends. Savages who could not know themselves 
— the Iroquois, the Australian aborigines, the na- 
tives of the Andaman Islands — believed that the 
earth was at first sterile and dry, all the water 
having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad 
which was compelled, by queer stratagems, to 
regurgitate it. These are little children's imagin- 
ings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes 
the form of an alluring epic — the dragon watching 
over the celestial waters, of which he has taken 
possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic 
battle, and restores them to the earth. 

Cosmogonies, Lang remarks, furnish a good 
example of the development of myths ; it is possible 
to mark out stages and rounds according to the 
degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of 
Oceania believe that the world was created and 
organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various 
birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful 
animals as gods in disguise (such are certain Mexi- 
can divinities). Later, all trace of animal worship 

*0p. cit, pp. 23-24. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. I29 

disappears, and the character of the myth is purely 
anthropomorphic.^ Kiihn, in a special work, has 
shown how the successive stages of social evolution 
express themselves in the successive stages of myth- 
ology — myths of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, 
land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of pure savagery. 
Max Miiller^ admits at least two periods — pan- 
Aryan and Indo-Iranian — prior to the Vedic period. 
In the course of this slow evolution the work of the 
imagination passes little by little from infancy, 
becomes more and more complex, subtle and refined. 
In the Aryan race, the Vedic epoch, despite its 
sacerdotal ritualism, is considered as the period par 
excellence of mythic efflorescence. "The myth,'* 
says Taine, "is not here (in the Vedas) a disguise, 
but an expression; no language is more true and 
more supple: it permits a glimpse of, or rather 
causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the move- 
ments of the air, change of seasons, all the accidents 
of sky, fire, storm : external nature has never found 
a mode of thought so graceful and flexible for 
reflecting itself thereby in all the inexhaustible 
variety of her appearances. However changeable 
nature may be, the imagination is equally so."^ It 
animates everything — not only fire in general, Agni, 
but also the seven forms of flame, the wood that 
lights it, the ten fingers of the sacrificing priest, the 

* Lang, op. cit., I, 162, and passim. 
''Max Miiller, op cit., p. 12. 
^Nouveaux Essais, p. 320. 



130 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

prayer itself, and even the railing surrounding the 
altar. This is one example among many others. 
The partisans of the linguistic theory have been able 
to maintain that at this moment every word is a 
myth, because every word is a name designating a 
quality or an act, transformed by the imagination 
into substance. Max Miiller has translated a page 
of Hesiod, substituting the analytic, abstract, ra- 
tional language of our time for the image-making 
names. Immediately, all the mythical material 
vanishes. Thus, ''Selene kisses the sleeping 
Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." 
The most skilled linguists often declare themselves 
unable to change the pliant tongue of the imagina- 
tive age into our algebraic idioms.^ Thought by 
imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time 
take on a rational dress. 

The mental state that marks the zenith of the 
free development of the imagination, is at present 
met with only in mystics and in some poets. Lan- 
guage has, however, preserved numerous vestiges 
of it in current expressions, the mythic signification 
of which has been lost — the sun rises, the sea is 
treacherous, the wind is mad, the earth is thirsty, 
etc. 

To this triumphant period there succeeds among 
the races that have made progress in evolution, i. e., 
that have been able to rise above the age of (pure) 

' See Lang, Myth, Eituol and Religion, I, p. 234, a passage 
from the Big-Veda, with four very different translations by 
Max Miiller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. I3I 

imagination, the period of waning, of regression, of 
decline. In order to understand it and perceive the 
how and why of it, let us first note that myths are 
reducible to two great categories: 

a. The explicative myths, arising from utility, 
from the necessity of knowing. These undergo a 
radical transformation. 

b. The non-explicative myths, resulting from a 
need of luxury, from a pure desire to create : these 
undergo only a partial transformation. 

Let us follow them in the accomplishment of their 
destinies. 

a. The myths of the first class, answering the 
various needs of knowing in order afterwards to 
act, are much the more numerous. ... Is 
primitive man by nature curious? The question 
has been variously answered; thus, Tylor says yes; 
Spencer, no.^ The affirmative and negative answers 
are not, perhaps, irreconcilable, if we take account 
of the differences in races. Taking it generally, 
it is hard to believe that he is not curious — he holds 
his life at that price. He is in the presence of the 
universe just as we are when confronted with an 
unknown animal or fruit. Is it useful or hurtful? 
He has all the more need for a conception of the 
world since he feels himself dependent on every- 
thing. While our subordination as regards nature 
is limited by the knowledge of her laws, he is on 

* On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the 
position held by Plato. (Tr.) 



132 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

account of his animism in a position similar to ours 
before an assembly of persons whom we have to 
approach or avoid, conciliate or yield to. It is 
necessary that he be practically curious — that is 
indispensable for his preservation. Tliere has been 
alleged the indifference of primitive man to the 
complicated engines of civilization (a steamboat, a 
watch, etc.). This shows, not lack of curiosity, but 
absence of intelligence or interest for what he does 
not consider immediately useful for his needs. 

His conception of the world is a product of the 
imagination, because no other is possible for him. 
The problem is imperatively set, he solves it as best 
he can; the myth is a response to a host of theo- 
retical and practical needs. For him, the imagina- 
tive explanation takes the place of the rational 
explanation which is yet unborn, and which for 
great reasons can not arise — first, because the 
poverty of his experience, limited to a small circle, 
engenders a multitude of erroneous associations, 
which remain unbroken in the absence of other ex- 
periences to contradict and shatter them; secondly, 
because of the extreme weakness of his logic and 
especially of his conception of causality, which most 
often reduces itself to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. 
Whence we have the thorough subjectivity of his 
interpretation of the world.^ In short, primitive 

* On this general subject consult the interesting though some- 
what general article by Professor John Dewey, **The Interpre- 
tation of the Savage Mind, ' ' in the Psychological Review, May, 
1903. The author justly criticises the current description of 



CREATION OF MYTHS. 133 

man makes without exception or reserve, and in 
terms of images, what science makes provisionally, 
with reserves, and by means of concepts — namely, 
hypotheses. 

Thus, the explicative myths are as we see, an 
epitome of a practical philosophy, proportioned to 
the requirements of the man of the earliest, or 
slightly-cultured ages. Then comes the period of 
critical transformation: a slow, progressive substi- 
tution of a rational conception of the world for the 
imaginative conception. It results from a work of 
de personification of the myth, which little by little 
loses its subjective, anthropomorphic character in 
order to become all the more objective, without ever 
succeeding therein completely. 

This transformation occurs thanks to two prin- 
cipal supports: methodical and prolonged observa- 
tion of phenomena, which suggests the objective 
notion of stability and law, opposed to the caprices 
of animism (example: the work of the ancient 
astronomers of the Orient) ; the growing power of 
reflection and of logical rigor, at least in well- 
endowed races. 

It does not concern the subject in hand to trace 
here the fortunes of the old battle whereby the 
imagination, assailed by a rival power, loses little 
by little its position and preponderance in the inter- 
pretation of the world. A few remarks will suffice. 

savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general 
misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his 
activities. (Tr.) 



134 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

To begin with, the myth is transformed into 
philosophic speculation, but without total disap- 
pearance, as is seen in the mystic speculations of the 
Pythagoreans, in the cosmology of Empedocles, 
ruled by two human-like antitheses, Love and Hate. 
Even to Thales, an observing, positive spirit that 
calculates eclipses, the world is full of daemons, 
remains of primitive animism.^ In Plato, even 
leaving out his theory of Ideas, the employment of 
myth is not merely a playful mannerism, but a real 
survival. 

This work of elimination, begim by the philoso- 
phers, is more firmly established in the first attempts 
of pure science (the Alexandrian mathematicians; 
naturalists like Aristotle; certain Greek physicians). 
Nevertheless, we know how 'imaginary concepts 
remained alive in physics, chemistry, biology, down 
to the sixteenth century; we know the bitter 
struggle that the two following centuries witnessed 
against occult qualities and loose methods. Even 
in our day, Stallo has been able to propose to write 
a treatise "On Myth in Science.'* Without speaking 
at this time of the hypotheses admitted as such and 
on account of their usefulness, there yet remain in 
the sciences many latent signs of primitive anthro- 
pomorphism. At the beginning of the nineteenth 

*It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded aa 
propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that every- 
thing is derived from water; for with him, *' water" stands 
not merely for the substance that we call chemically ^'HjO," 
but for the ** spirit that is in water" as well — the water-spirit 
is the Grundprincip. (Tr.) 



CREATION OF MYTHS. 135 

century people believed in several "properties of 
matter" that we now regard as merely modes of 
energy. But this latter notion, an expression of 
permanence underneath the various manifestations 
of nature, is for science only an abstract, symbol- 
ical formula : if we attempt to embody it, to make 
it concrete and representable, then, whether we will 
or no, it resolves itself into the feeling of muscular 
effort, that is, takes on a human character. To 
produce no other examples, we see that so far as 
concerns the last term of this slow regression, the 
imagination is not yet completely annulled, although 
it may have had to recede incessantly before a more 
solid and better armed rival. 

b. In addition to the explanatory myths, there 
are those having no claim to be in this class, 
although they have perhaps been originally sug- 
gested by some phenomenon of animate or inani- 
mate nature. They are much less numerous than 
the others, since they do not answer multiple neces- 
sities of life. Such are the epic or heroic stories, 
popular tales, romances (which are found as early 
as ancient Egypt) : it is the first appearance of that 
form of esthetic activity destined later to become 
literature. Here, the mythic activity suffers only a 
superficial metamorphosis — the essence is not 
changed. Literature is mythology transformed and 
adapted to the variable conditions of civilization. 
If this statement appear doubtful or disrespectful, 
we should note the following. 

Historically, from myths wherein there figure at 



136 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

first only divine personages, there arise the epics of 
the Hindoos, Greeks, Scandinavians, etc., in which 
the gods and heroes are confounded, live in the 
same v^orld, on a level. Little by little the divine 
character is rubbed out; the myth approaches the 
ordinary conditions of human life, until it becomes 
the romantic novel, and finally the realistic story. 

Psychologically, the imaginative work that has 
at first created the gods and superior beings before 
whom man bows because he has unconsciously pro- 
duced them, becomes more and more humanized as 
it becomes conscious; but it cannot cease being a 
projection of the feelings, ideas, and nature of man 
into the fictitious beings upon whom the belief of 
their creator and of his hearers confers an illusory 
and fleeting existence. The gods have become pup- 
pets whose master man feels himself, and whom he 
treats as he likes. Throughout the manifold tech- 
niques, esthetics, documentary collections, reproduc- 
tions of the social life, the creative activity of the 
earliest time remains at bottom unchanged. Litera- 
ture is a decadent and rationalized mythology. 

Ill 

Does the mythic activity of ancient times still 
exist among civilized peoples, unmodified as in 
literary creation, but in its pure form, as a non- 
individual, collective, anonymous, unconscious, 
work? Yes; as the popular imagination, when 
creating legends. In passing from natural phe- 
nomena to historic events and persons, the construe- 



CREATION OF MYTHS. 137 

tive imagination takes a slightly different position 
which we may characterize thus : legend is to myth 
what illusion is to hallucination. 

The psychological mechanism is the same in both 
cases. Illusion and legend are partial imaginations, 
hallucination and myth are total imaginations. Illu- 
sion may vary in all shades between exact percep- 
tion and hallucination; legend can run all the way 
from exact history to pure myth. The difference 
between illusion and hallucination is sometimes 
imperceptible; the same is sometimes true of legend 
and myth. Sensory illusion is produced by an 
addition of images changing perception; legend is 
also produced by an addition of images changing 
the historic personage or event. The only differ- 
ence, then, is in the material used; in one case, a 
datum of sense, a natural phenomenon ; in the other, 
a fact of history, a human event. 

The psychological genesis of legends being thus 
established in general, what, according to the facts, 
are the unconscious processes that the imagination 
employs for creating them? We may distinguish 
two principal ones. 

The first process is a fusion or combination. The 
myth precedes the fact; the historical personage or 
event enters into the mould of a pre-existing myth. 
"It is necessary that the mythic form be fashioned 
before one may pour into it, in a more or less fluid 
state, the historic metal." Imagination had created 
a solar mythology long before it could be incarnated 
by the Greeks in Hercules and his exploits. "There 



138 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

was historically a Roland, perhaps even an Arthur, 
but the greater part of the great deeds that the 
poetry of the Middle Ages attributes to them had 
been accomplished long before by mythological 
heroes whose very names had been forgotten."^ At 
one time the man is completely hidden by the myth 
and becomes absolutely legendary; again, he 
assumes only an aureole that transfigures him. 
This is exactly what occurs in the simpler phe- 
nomenon of sensory illusion: now the real (the 
perception) is swamped by the images, is trans- 
formed, and the objective element reduced to almost 
nothing; at another time, the objective element 
remains master, but with numerous deformations. 

The second process is idealization, which can act 
conjointly with the other. Popular imagination 
incarnates in a real man its ideal of heroism, of 
loyalty, of love, of piety, or of cowardice, cruelty, 
wickedness, and other abnormalities. The process 
is more complex. It presupposes in addition to 
mythic creation a labor of abstraction, through 
which a dominating characteristic of the historic 
personage is chosen and everything else is sup- 
pressed, cast into oblivion: the ideal becomes a 
center of attraction about which is formed the 
legend, the romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, 
the Charlemagne, the Cid of the Middle Age tra- 
ditions to the character of history. 

Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme 
simplification — which the law of mental inertia or 

^Max Miiller, op. cit., 39, 47-48, 59-60. 



CREATION OF MYTHS. 1 39 

of least effort is sufficient to explain — always per- 
sists : Lucretia Borgia remains the type of debauch- 
ery, Henry IV of good fellowship, etc. The pro- 
tests of historians and the documentary evidence 
that they produce avail nothing: the work of the 
imagination resists everything. 

To conclude: We have just passed over a period 
of mental evolution wherein the creative imagina- 
tion reigns exclusively, explains everything, is suf- 
ficient for everything. It has been said that the 
imagination is "a temporary derangement.'* It 
seems so to us, although it is often an effort toward 
wisdom, i. e., toward the comprehension of things. 
It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it 
represents a state intermediate between that of a 
man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that 
of a furious madman, or of a man in the delirium 
of fever. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION 

We now pass from primitive to civilized man, 
from collective to individual creation, the charac- 
ters of which it remains for us to study as we find 
them in great inventors who exhibit them on a 
large scale. Fortunately, we may dismiss the treat- 
ment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of 
the psychological nature of genius. As we have 
already noted, there enter into its composition fac- 
tors other than the creative imagination, although 
the latter is not the least among them. Besides, 
great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the 
current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," 
we may ask in limine whether their psychology is 
explicable by means of simple formulae, as with the 
average man, or whether even monographs teach us 
no more concerning their nature than general 
theories that are never applicable to all cases. 
Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great in- 
ventor, accepting it de facto historically and psycho- 
logically, our task is limited to the attempt to sepa- 
rate characters that seem, from observation and 
experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I4I 

Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyram- 
bics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency 
as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one 
attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at 
in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in 
the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration 
and insanity, it has reached, as we know — ^through 
timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lelut) — 
its complete expression in the famous formula of 
Moreau de Tours, *'Genius is a neurosis." 

Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital 
properties and consequently the most favorable con- 
dition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, 
Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or 
manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's 
theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision 
by substituting for neurosis in general a specific 
neurosis — larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from 
eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to 
combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has com- 
promised everything in wanting to make the term 
too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, 
they say: either the neuropathic state is the direct, 
immediate cause of which the higher faculties of 
genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority, 
through the excessive labor and excitation it in- 
volves, causes neuropathic disturbances; or, there 
is no relation of cause and effect between genius and 
neurosis, but mere coexistence, since there are found 
very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the aver- 
age without a neurotic blemish ; or, the two states — 



142 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the one psychic, the other physiological — are both 
effects, resulting from organic conditions that pro- 
duce according to circumstances genius, insanity, 
and divers nervous troubles. Every one of these 
hypotheses can allege facts in its favor. We must, 
however, recognize that in most men of genius are 
found so many peculiarities, physical eccentricities 
and disorders of all kinds that the pathologic theory 
retains much probability. 

There remain for consideration the sane geniuses 
who, despite many efforts and subtleties, have not 
yet been successfully brought under the foregoing 
formula, and who have made possible the enunci- 
ation of another theory. Recently, Nordau, reject- 
ing the theory of his master Lombroso, has main- 
tained that it is just as reasonable to say that 
"genius is a neurosis'* as that "athleticism is a 
cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected 
with heart disease. For him, "the essential ele- 
ments of genius are judgment and will." Follow- 
ing this definition, he establishes the following 
hierarchy of men of genius : At the highest rung 
of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will 
are equally powerful; men of action who make 
world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon) — 
these are masters of men. On the second level are 
found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper- 
development of will — these are masters of matter 
(Pasteur, Helmholtz, Rontgen). On the third step 
are geniuses of judgment without energetic will — 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I43 

thinkers and philosophers. What then shall we do 
with the emotional geniuses — the poets and artists? 
Theirs is not genius in the strict sense, "because it 
creates nothing new and exercises no influence on 
phenomena." Without discussing the value of this 
classification, without examining whether it is even 
possible, — since there is no common measure be- 
tween Alexander, Pasteur, Shakespeare, and Spi- 
noza,— and whether, on the other hand, common 
opinion is not right in putting on the same level 
the great creators, whoever they be, solely because 
they are far above the average, this remark is abso- 
lutely necessary: In the definition above cited the 
creative faculty par excellence — imagination — ^nec- 
essary to all inventors, is entirely left out. 

We can, however, derive some benefit from this 
arbitrary division. Although it is impossible to 
admit that "emotional geniuses" create nothing new 
and have no influence on society, they do form a 
special group. Creative work requires of them a 
nervous excitability and a predominance of affective 
states that rapidly become morbid. In this way 
they have provided the pathological theory with 
most of its facts. It would perhaps be necessary to 
recognize distinctions between the various forms of 
invention. They require very different organic and 
psychic conditions in order that some may profit 
by morbid dispositions that are far from useful to 
others. This point should deserve a special study 
never made hitherto. 



144 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 



We shall reduce to three the characters ordinarily 
met in most great inventors. No one of them is 
without exception. 

I. Precocity, which is reducible to innateness. 
The natural bent becomes manifest as soon as cir- 
cumstances allow — it is the sign of the true voca- 
tion. The story is the same in all cases: at one 
moment the flash occurs ; but this is not as frequent 
as is supposed. False vocations abound. If we 
deduct those attracted through imitation, environ- 
mental influence, exhortations and advice, chance, 
the attraction of immediate gain, aversion tO' a 
career imposed from without which they shun and 
adoption of an opposite one, will there remain many 
natural and irresistible vocations? 

We have seen above that^ the passage from re- 
productive to constructive imagination takes place 
toward the end of the third year. According to 
some authors, this initial period should be followed 
by a depression about the fifth year; thencefor- 
ward the upward progress is continuous. But the 
creative faculty, from its nature and content, devel- 
ops in a very clear, chronological order. Music, 
plastic arts, poetry, mechanical invention, scientific 
imagination — such is the usual order of appearance. 

In music, with the exception of a few child-prodi- 
gies, we hardly find personal creation before the 
age of twelve or thirteen. As examples of precocity 

* See above, Chapter II. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I45 

may be cited: Mozart, at the age of three; Men- 
delssohn, five; Haydn, four; Handel, twelve; Web- 
er, twelve; Schubert, eleven; Cherubini, thirteen; 
and many others. Those late in developing — 
Beethoven, Wagner, etc. — are fewer by far.^ 

In the plastic arts, vocation and creative aptitude 
are shown perceptibly later, on the average about 
the fourteenth year: Giotto, at ten; Van Dyck, 
ten; Raphael, eight; Guerchin, eight; Greuze, eight; 
Michaelangelo, thirteen; Albrecht Diirer, fifteen; 
Bernini, twelve; Rubens and Jordaens being also 
precocious. 

In poetry we find no work having any individual 
character before sixteen. Chatterton died at that 
age, perhaps the only example of so young a poet 
leaving any reputation. Schiller and Byron also 
began at sixteen. Besides this, we know that the 
talent for versification, at least as imitation, is very 
early in developing. 

In mechanical arts children have early a remark- 
able capacity for understanding and imitating. At 
nine, Poncelet bought a watch that was out of 
order in order to study it, then took it apart and 
put it together correctly. Arago tells that at the 
same age Fresnel was called by his comrades a 
"man of genius," because he had determined by 
correct experiments "the length and caliber of chil- 
dren's elder-wood toy cannon giving the longest 
range; also, which green or dry woods used in the 

' Some of these and the following figures are borrowed from 
Oelzelt-Newin, op. cit., pp. 70 ff. 



146 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

manufacture of bows have most strength and last- 
ing power." In general, the average of mechanical 
invention is later, and scarcely comes earlier than 
that of scientific discovery. 

The form of abstract imagination requisite for 
invention in the sciences has no great personal 
value before the twentieth year : there are a goodly 
number, however, who have given proof of it before 
that age — Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Auguste 
Comte, etc. Almost all are mathematicians. 

These chronological variations result not from 
chance, but from psychological conditions necessary 
for the development of each form of imagination. 
We know that the acquisition of musical sounds is 
prior to speech : many children can repeat a scale 
correctly before they are able to talk. On the other 
hand, as dissolution follows evolution in inverse 
order,^ aphasic patients lacking the most common 
words, can nevertheless sing. Sound-images are 
thus organized before all others, and the creative 
power when acting in this direction finds very early 
material for its use. For the plastic arts a longer 
apprenticeship is necessary for the education of the 
senses and movements. To acquire manual dex- 
terity one must become skilled in observing form, 
combinations of lines and colors, and apt at repro- 
ducing them. Poetry and first attempts ai novel- 
writing presuppose some experience of the passions 
of human life and a certain reflection of which the 

* Compare the well-known theory of Dr. Hughlings-Jackson. 
(Tr.) 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I47 

child is incapable. Invention in the mechanic arts, 
as in the plastic arts, requires the education of the 
senses and movements ; and, further, calculation, ra- 
tional combination of means, rigorous adaptation to 
practical necessities. Lastly, scientific imagination 
is nothing without a high development of the 
capacity for abstraction, which is a matter of slow 
growth. Mathematicians are the most precocious 
because their material is the most simple; they have 
no need, as in the case of the experimental sciences, 
of an extended knowledge of facts, which is 
acquired only with time. 

At this period of its development the imagination 
IS in large part imitation. We must explain this 
paradox. The creator begins by imitating: this is 
such a well-known fact that it is needless to give 
proof of it, and it is subject to few exceptions. 
The most original mind is, at first, consciously or 
unconsciously somebody's disciple. It is necessarily 
so. Nature gives only one thing, "the creative in- 
stinct;" that is, the need of producing in a deter- 
termined line. This internal factor alone is insuf- 
ficient. Aside from the fact that the imagination at 
first has at its disposal only a very limited material, 
it lacks technique, the processes indispensable for 
realizing itself. As long as the creator has not 
found the suitable form into which to cast his 
creation he must indeed borrow it from another; 
his ideas must suffer the necessity of a provisional 
shelter. This explains how it is that later the 
inventor, reaching full consciousness of himself, 



148 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

in order to complete mastery of his methods, often 
breaks with his models, and burns what he at first 
adorned. 

II 

A second character consists of the .necessity, the 
fatality of creation. Great inventors feel that they 
have a task to accomplish; they feel that they are 
charged with a mission. On this point we have a 
large number of testimonials and avowals. In the 
darkest days of his life Beethoven, haunted by the 
thought of suicide, wrote, **Art alone has kept me 
back. It seemed to me that I could not leave the 
world before producing all that I felt within me." 
Ordinarily, inventors are apt in only one line; even 
when they have a certain versatility, they remain 
bound to their own peculiar manner — they have 
their mark — like Michaelangelo; or, if they attempt 
to change it, if they try to be unfaithful as respects 
their vocation, they fall much below themselves. 

This characteristic of irresistible impulsion which 
makes the genius create not because he wants to, but 
because he must do it, has often been likened to 
instinct. This very widespread view has been ex- 
amined before (Part I, Chapter ii). 

We have seen that there is no creative instinct 
in general, but particular tendencies, orientated in a 
definite direction, which in most respects resemble 
instinct. It is contrary to experience and logic to 
admit that the creative genius follows any path 
whatever at his choice — a proposition that Weis- 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I49 

mann, in his horror of Inheritance of acquired char- 
acters (which are a kind of innateness) is not afraid 
to support. That is true only of the man of talent, 
a matter of education and circumstances. The dis- 
tinction between these two orders of creators — the 
great and the ordinary — has been made too often 
to need repetition, although it is proper to recognize 
that it is not always easy in practice, that there are 
names that cause us to hesitate, which we class 
somewhat at hazard. Yet genius remains, as Scho- 
penhauer used to say, monstrum per excessum; ex- 
cessive development in one direction. Hypertrophy 
of a special aptitude often makes genius fall, as far 
as the others are concerned, below the average level. 
Even those exceptional men who have given proof 
of multiple aptitudes, such as Vinci, Michaelangelo, 
Goethe, etc., always have a predominating tendency 
which, in common opinion, sums them up. 

Ill 

A third characteristic is the clearly defined indi- 
viduality of the great creator. He is the man of 
his work; he has done this or that: that is his 
mark. He is "representative." There is no other 
opinion as to this; what is a subject of discussion 
is the origin, not the nature of this individuality. 
The Darwinian theory as to the all-powerful action 
of environment has led to the question whether the 
representative character of great inventors comes 
from themselves, and from them alone, or must 



150 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

not rather be sought in the unconscious influence of 
the race and epoch of which they are at a given 
instant only brighter sparks. This debate goes be- 
yond the bounds of our subject. To decide whether 
social changes are due mostly to the accumulated 
influences of some individuals and their initiative, 
or to the environment, to circumstances, to heredi- 
tary transmission, is not a problem for psychology 
to solve. We can not, however, totally avoid this 
discussion, for it touches the very springs of cre- 
ation. 

Is the inventive genius the highest degree of per- 
sonality or a synthesis of masses? — the result of 
himself or of others? — the expression of an indi- 
vidual activity or of a collective activity? In short, 
should we look for his representative character 
within him or without? Both these alternatives 
have authoritative supporters. 

For Schopenhauer, Carlyle {Hero-worship) ^ 
Nietzsche, ct al, the great man is an autonomous 
product, a being without a peer, a demigod, "Ueher- 
mcnsch" He can be explained neither by heredity, 
nor by environment. 

For others (Taine, Spencer, Grant, Allen, et al.), 
the important factor is seen in the race and external 
conditions. Goethe held that a whole family line is 
summarized some day in a single one of its mem- 
bers, and a whole people in one or several men. 
For him, Louis XIV and Voltaire are respectively 
the French king and writer par excellence. "The 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. I5I 

alleged great men," says Tolstoi, "are only the labels 
of history, they give their names to events."^ 

Each party explains the same facts according to 
its own principle and in its own peculiar way. The 
great historic epochs are rich in great men (the 
Greek republics of the fourth century B. C, the 
Roman Republic, the Renaissance, French Revolu- 
tion, etc.). Why? Because, say some, periods put 
into ferment by the the deep working of the masses 
make this blossoming possible. Because, say the 
others, this flowering modifies profoundly the social 
and intellectual condition of the masses and raises 
their level. For the former the ferment is deep 
down; for the latter it is on top. 

Without presuming to solve this vexed question, 
I lean toward the view of individualism pure and 
simple. It seems to me very difficult to admit that 
the great creator is only the result of his environ- 
ment. Since this influence acts on many others, 
it is very necessary that, in great men, there should 
be in addition a personal factor. Besides, in oppo- 
sition to the exclusively environmental theory we 
may bring the well-known fact that most inno- 
vators and inventors at first arouse opposition. We 
know the invariable sentence on everything novel — 
it is "false" or "bad;" then it is adopted with the 
statement that it had been known for a long time. 

* For an elaborate and interesting discussion of this subject, 
see Tolstoi's Physiology of War, As showing the later trend 
of thought on this general theme, see the excellent summary by 
Professor Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History, 
(Tr.) 



152 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

In the hypothesis of collective invention, it seems 
that the mass of people should applaud inventors, 
recognizing itself in them, seeing its confused 
thought take form and body: but most often the 
contrary happens. The misoneism of crowds seems 
to me one of the strongest arguments in favor of 
the individual character of invention. 

We can doubtless distinguish two cases — in the 
first, the creator sums up and clearly translates the 
aspirations of his milieu; in the second, he is in 
opposition to it because he goes beyond it. How 
many innovators have been disappointed because 
they came before their time! But this distinction 
does not reach to the bottom of the question, and is 
not at all sufficient as an answer. 

Let us leave this problem, which, on account of 
its complexity, we can hardly solve through peremp- 
tory reasoning, and let us try to examine objectively 
the relation between creation and environment in 
order that we may see to what extent the creative 
imagination, without losing its individual charac- 
ter — which is impossible — depends on the intel- 
lectual and social surrounding. 

If, with the American psychologists,^ we term 
the disposition for innovating a "spontaneous vari- 
ation" — a Darwinian term explaining nothing, but 
convenient — we may enunciate the following law : 

* William James, The Will to Believe and other Essays, pp. 
218 ff.; Jastrow, Fsych. Bev., May, 1898, p. 307; J. Eoyce, 
ibid., March, 1898; Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpreta- 
tions, etc. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 1 53 

The tendency toward spontaneous variation {in- 
vention) is always in inverse ratio to the simplicity 
of the environment. 

The savage environment is in its nature very 
simple, consequently homogeneous. The lov^er races 
show a much smaller degree of differentiation than 
the higher; in them, as Jastrow says, physical and 
psychic maturity is more precocious, and as the 
period just before the adult age is the plastic period 
per se, this diminishes the chances of a departure 
from the common type. Thus comparison between 
whites and blacks, between primitive and civilized 
peoples, shows that, for equal populations, there is 
an enormous disproportion as to the number of 
innovators. 

The barbarian environment is much more com- 
plex and heterogeneous : it contains all the rudi- 
ments of civilized life. Consequently, it favors 
more individual variations and is richer in superior 
men. But these variations are rarely produced out- 
side of a very restricted field — political, military, 
religious. So it seems impossible to agree with 
Joly^ that neither primitive nor barbarian peoples 
produce superior minds, "unless," as he says, "by 
this name we mean those that simply surpass 
their congeners.'' But is there a criterion other 
than that? I see none. Greatness is altogether a 
relative idea; and would not our great creators 
seem, to beings better endowed than we, very small ? 

The civilized environment, requiring division of 
* Joly, Psychologie des grands hommes. 



154 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

labor and consequently a constantly growing com- 
plexity of heterogeneous elements, is an open door 
for all vocations. Doubtless, the social spirit always 
retains something of that tendency toward stagna- 
tion that is the rule in lower social orders; it is 
more favorable to tradition than to innovation. But 
the inevitable necessity of a warm competition be- 
tween individuals and peoples is a natural antidote 
for that natural inertia; it favors useful variations. 
Moreover, civilization means evolution; conse- 
quently the conditions under which the imagina- 
tion is active change with the times. Let us sup- 
pose, Weismann justly says, that in the Samoan 
Islands there were born a child having the singular 
and extraordinary genius of Mozart. What could 
he accomplish? At the most, extend the gamut of 
three or four tones to seven, and create a few more 
complex melodies; but he would be as unable to 
compose symphonies as Archimedes would have 
been to invent an electric dynamo. How many 
creators have been wrecked because the conditions 
necessary for their inventions were lacking? Roger 
Bacon foresaw several of our great discoveries; 
Cardan, the differential calculus; Van Helmont, 
chemistry ; and it has been possible to write a book 
on the forerunners of Darwin.^ We talk so much 
of the free flight of imagination, of the all-compre- 
hensive power of the creator, that we forget the 
sociological conditions — not to mention others — 
on which they are every moment dependent. In 
* Osborn, From the GreeTcs to Darwin. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 1 55 

this respect, no invention is personal in the strict 
sense; there always remains in it a little of that 
anonymous collaboration the highest expression of 
which, as we have seen, is the mythic activity. 

By way of summary, and whatever be the causes, 
we may say that there is a universal tendency in 
all living matter toward variation, whether we con- 
sider vegetables, animals, or the physical and mental 
man. The need of innovating is only a special 
case, rare in the lower races, frequent in the higher. 
This tendency toward variation is fundamental or 
superficial : As fundamental, it corresponds to 
genius, and survives through processes analogous 
to natural selection, i. e., by its own power. As 
superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and 
prospers chiefly through the help of circumstances 
and environment. Here, the orientation comes 
from without, not from within. According as the 
spirit of the time inclines rather to poetry or paint- 
ing, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or 
military art, minds of the second order are dragged 
into the current — showing that a goodly part of 
their power is in the aptness, not for invention, but 
for imitation. 

II 

The determination of the characters belonging to 
the inventive genius has necessitated some seem- 
ingly irrelevant remarks on the action of the en- 
vironment. Let us return to invention, strictly 
so-called. 



156 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

For inventing there is always required a natural 
aptitude, sometimes, a happy chance. 

The natural disposition should be accepted as a 
fact. Why does a man create? Because he is 
capable of forming new combinations of ideas. 
However naive this answer may be, there is no 
other. The only thing possible, is the determination 
of the conditions necessary and sufficient for pro- 
ducing novel combinations: this has been done in 
the first part of this book, and there is no occasion 
for going over it again. But there is another 
aspect in creative work to be considered — its psycho- 
logical mechanism, and the form of its develop- 
ment. 

Every normal person creates little or much. 
He may, in his ignorance, invent what has been 
already done a thousand times. Even if this is not 
a creation as regards the species, it is none the less 
such for the individual. It is wrong to say, as has 
been said, that an invention "is a new and impor- 
tant idea." Novelty only is essential — that is the 
psychological mark : importance and utility are ac- 
cessory, merely social marks. Invention is thus 
unduly limited when we attribute it to great invent- 
ors only. At this moment, however, we are con- 
cerned only with these, and in them the mechanism 
of invention is easier to study. 

We have already seen how false is the theory 
that holds that there is always a sudden stroke of 
inspiration, followed by a period of rapid or slow 
execution. On the contrary, observation reveals 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 157 

many processes that apparently differ less in the 
content of invention than according to individual 
temperament. I distinguish two general processes 
of which the rest are variations. In all creation, 
great or small, there is a directing idea, an "ideal" — 
understanding the word not in its transcendental 
sense, but merely as synonymous with end or goal — 
or more simply, a problem to solve. The locus of 
the idea, of the given problem, is not the same in 
the two processes. In the one I term "complete" 
the ideal is at the beginning : in the "abridged" it is 
in the middle. There are also other differences 
which the following tables will make more clear: 

First Process (complete) . 



1st phase 


2nd phase 


3d phase 


)EA (commence- 


INVi^NTION, 


YEKIFICATION, 


ment 


or 


or 


pecial incubation 


DISCOVEEY 


APPLICATION 


of more or less 


(end) 




duration 







The idea excites attention and takes a fixed char- 
acter. The period of brooding begins. For Newton 
it lasted seventeen years, and at the time of defi- 
nitely establishing his discovery by calculation he 
was so overcome with emotion that he had to assign 
to another the task of completing it. The mathe- 
matician Hamilton tells us that his method of qua- 
ternians burst upon him one day, completely fin- 
ished, while he was near a bridge in Dublin. "In 
that moment I had the result of fifteen years* labor.'* 
Darwin gathers material during his voyages, spends 



158 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

a long time observing plants and animals, then 
through the chance reading of Malthus* book, hits 
upon and formulates his theory. In literary and 
artistic creation similar examples are frequent/ 
The second phase is only an instant, but essen- 
tial — the moment of discovery, when the creator 
exclaims his "Eureka!"^ With it, the work is vir- 
tually or really ended. 

Second Process (abridged) . 

Ist phase 2nd phase 3rd phase 

General prepara- IDEA (commence- CONSTEUCTIVB 

tion ment) and 

(unconscious) INSPIRATION DEVELOPING 

ERUPTION period. 

This is the process in intuitive minds. Such 
seems to have been the case of Mozart, Poe, etc. 
Without attempting what would be a tedious 
enumeration of examples, we may say that this 
form of creation comprises two classes — those 
coming to maturity through an internal impulse, 
a sudden stroke of inspiration, and those who are 
suddenly illumined by chance. The tv/o processes 
diflfer superficially rather than essentially. Let us 
briefly compare them. 

With some, the first phase is long and fully con- 

* Such, according to Binet and Passy, seem to be the cases of 
the Goncourts, Pailleron, etc. See "Psychologie des auteurs 
dramatiques, ' * in L'annSe psychologique, I, 96. 

' Compare the striking instance of this moment as given by 
Froebel, in his Autobiography, in connection with his idea of 
the Kindergarten. (Tr.) 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 1 59 

sciotis ; in others it seems negligible, equal to zero — 
there is nothing of it because there exists a natural 
or acquired tendency toward equilibrium. "For a 
long time," says Schumann, "I had the habit of 
racking my brain, and now I scarcely need to scratch 
my forehead. Everything runs naturally."^ 

The second phase is almost the same in both 
cases: it is only an instant, but it is essential — it 
is the moment of imaginative synthesis. 

Lastly, the third phase is very short for some, 
because the main labor is already done, and there 
remains only the finishing touch or the verification. 
It is long for others, because they must pass from 
the perceived idea to complete realization, and be- 
cause the preparatory work is faulty; so that for 
these the second creative process is shortened in 
appearance only. 

Such seem to me the two principal forms of the 
mechanism of creation. These are genera; they 
include species and varieties that a patient and 
minute study of the processes peculiar to various 
inventors would reveal to us. We must bear in 
mind that this work makes no claim of being a 
monograph on invention, but merely a sketch.^ 

The two processes above described seem to corre- 

* Quoted by Arreat, Memoir e et Imagination, p. 118. (Paris, 
F. Alcan.) 

*Paulhan ("De 1 'invention, " Bev. Philos., December, 1898, 
pp. 590 ff.) distinguishes three kinds of development in inven- 
tion: (1) Spontaneous or reasoned — the directing idea per- 
sists to the end; (2) transformation, which comprises several 
contradictory evolutions succeeding and replacing one another 



l6o THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

spond on the whole to the oft-made distinction be- 
tween the intuitive or spontaneous, and the com- 
bining or reflective imagination. 

The intuitive, essentially synthetic form, is found 
principally in the purely imaginative types, children 
and savages. The mind proceeds from the whole 
to details. The generative idea resembles those con- 
cepts which, in the sciences, are of wide range 
because they condense a generalization rich in con- 
sequences. The subject is at first comprehended as 
a whole; development is organic, and we may com- 
pare it to the embryological process that causes a 
living being to arise from the fertflized ovum, 
analogous to an immanent logic. As a type of this 
creative form there has often been given a letter 
wherein Mozart explains his mode of conception. 
Recently (and that is why I do not reprint it here) 
it has been suspected of being apocryphal. I regret 
this — it was worthy of being authentic. According 
to Goethe, Shakespeare's Hamlet could have been 
created only through an intuitive process, etc. 

The combining, discursive imagination proceeds 
from details to the vaguely-perceived unity. It 
starts from a fragment that serves as a matrix, and 
becomes completed little by little. An adventure, an 
anecdote, a scene, a rapid glance, a detail, suggests 
a literary or artistic creation; but the organic form 
does not appear in a trice. In science, Kepler fur- 
nishes a good example of this combining imagina- 

in consequence of impressions and feelings; (3) deviation, 
which is a composite of the two preceding forms. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. l6l 

tion. It is known that he devoted a part of his 
Hfe trying strange hypotheses, until the day v^hen, 
having discovered the elliptical orbit of Mars, all 
his former v^ork took shape and became an organ- 
ized system. Did we want to make use once more 
of an embryological comparison, it would be neces- 
sary to look for it in the strange conceptions of 
ancient cosmogonies: they believed that from an 
earthly slime arose parts of bodies and separate 
organs which through a mysterious attraction and 
happy chance ended by sticking together, and form- 
ing living bodies.^ 

It is an accepted view that of these two modes, 
one, the abridged or intuitive process, is superior to 
the other. I confess to having held this prejudice. 
On examination, I find it doubtful, even false. 
There is a diiference, not any "higher" and "lower." 

First of all, both these forms of creation are 
necessary. The intuitive process can suffice for an 
invention of short duration: a rhyme, a story, a 
profile, a motif, an ornamental stroke, a little 
mechanical contrivance, etc. But as soon as the 
work requires time and development the discursive 
process becomes absolutely necessary: with many 
inventors one easily perceives the change from one 
form to the other. We have seen that in the case 
of Chopin, "creation was spontaneous, miraculous," 
coming complete and sudden. But George Sand 
adds : "The crisis over, then commenced the most 
heartrending labor at which I have ever been pres- 

*Cf. the well-known doctrine of Empedocles. (Tr.) 



1 62 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ent," and she pictures him to us agonized, * for days 
and weeks, running after the bits of lost inspiration. 
Goethe, likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding 
his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full 
of interruptions and gaps : *'The difficulty has been 
to get through strength of will what is really to be 
gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, 
according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a 
novel, always starting out with a general idea that 
dominates the work ; then, from induction to induc- 
tion, he draws out of it the characters and all the 
story." 

To sum up : Pure intuition and pure combination 
are exceptional ; ordinarily, it is a mixed process in 
which one of the two elements prevails and permits 
its qualification. If we note, in addition, that it 
would be easy to group under these two headings 
names of the first rank, we shall conclude that the 
difference is altogether in the mechanism, not in the 
nature of creation, and is consequently accessory; 
and that this difference is reducible to natural dispo- 
sitions, which we may contrast as follows : 
Ready-witted minds, ex- Logically - develo ping 

celling in conception, minds, excelling in 

making the whole al- elaboration. 

most out of one piece. 
Work primarily uncon- Patience the preponder- 

scious. ating role. 

Work primarily con- 
scious. 
Actions quick. Actions slow. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 163 

III 

"Were we to raise monuments to inventors in 
the arts and sciences, there would be fewer statues 
to men than to children, animals, and especially 
fortune.'' In this wise expressed himself one of 
the sage thinkers of the eighteenth century, Turgot. 
The importance of the last factor has been much 
exaggerated. Chance may be taken in two senses — 
one general, the other narrow. 

(i) In its broad meaning, chance depends on 
entirely internal, purely psychic circumstances. We 
know that one of the best conditions for inventing 
is abundance of material, accumulated experience, 
knowledge — which augment the chances of original 
association of ideas. It has even been possible to 
maintain that the nature of memory implies the 
capacity of creating in a special direction. The reve- 
lations of inventors or of their biographers leave no 
doubt as to the necessity of a large number of 
sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter 
whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a ma- 
chine, a poem, an opera, a picture, a building, a 
plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for discovery," 
says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and 
chance thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To 
be fertile in hypotheses — that is the first requirement 
for finding something new. The inventor's brain 
must be full of forms, of melodies, of mechanical 
agents, of commercial combinations, of figures, etc., 
according to the nature of his work. "But it is 



164 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

very rare that the ideas we find are exactly those 
we were seeking. In order to find, me must think 
along other lines,"'' Nothing is more true. 

So much for chance within: it is indisputable, 
whatever may have been said of it, but it depends 
finally on individuality — from it arises the non- 
anticipated synthesis of ideas. The abundance of 
memory-ideas, we know, is not a sufficient condi- 
tion for creation; it is not even a necessary condi- 
tion. It has been remarked that a relative ignorance 
is sometimes useful for invention: it favors assur- 
ance. There are inventions, especially scientific and 
industrial, that could not have been made had the 
inventors been arrested by the ruling and presum- 
ably invincible dogmas. The inventor was all the 
more free the more he was unaware of them. Then, 
as it was quite necessary to bow before the accom- 
plished fact, theory was broadened to include the 
new discovery and explain it. 

(2) Chance, in the narrow sense, is a fortunate 
occurrence stimulating invention : but to attribute to 
it the greater part, is a partial, erroneous view. 
Here, what we call chance, is the meeting and con- 
vergence of two factors — one internal (individual 
genius), the other, external (the fortuitous occur- 
rence). 

It is impossible to determine all that invention 
owes to chance in this sense. In primitive humanity 
its influence must have been enormous: the use of 
fire, the manufacture of weapons, of utensils, the 

*P. Souriau, TMorie de I'invention, pp. 6-7. 



HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. 1 65 

casting of metals : all that came about through acci- 
dents as simple as, for example, a tree falling across 
a stream suggesting the first idea of a bridge. 

In historic times — and to keep merely to the 
modern period — the collection of authentic facts 
would fill a large volume. Who does not know of 
Newton's apple, Galileo's lamp, Galvani's frog? 
Huyghens declared that, were it not for an unfore- 
seen combination of circumvStances, the invention of 
the telescope would require "a superhuman genius ;" 
it is known that we owe it to children who were 
playing with pieces of glass in an optician's shop. 
Schonbein discovered ozone, thanks to the phos- 
phorous odor of air traversed by electric sparks. 
The discoveries of Grimaldi and of Fresnel in re- 
gard to interferences, those of Faraday, of Arago, 
of Foucault, of Fraunhofer, of Kirchoff, and of 
hundreds of others owed something to "fortune." 
It is said that the sight of a crab suggested to Watt 
the idea of an ingenious machine. To chance, also, 
many poets, novelists, dramatists, and artists have 
owed the best part of their inspirations: literature 
and the arts abound in fictitious characters whose 
real originals are known. 

So much for the external, fortuitous factor; its 
role is clear. That of the internal factor is less so. 
It is not at all apparent to the ordinary mind, escap- 
ing the unreflecting. Yet it is extremely important. 
The same fortuitous event passes by millions of 
men without exciting anything. How many of 
Pisa's inhabitants had seen the lamp of their cathe- 



l66 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

dral before Galileo! He does not necessarily find 
who wants to find. The happy chance comes only 
to those worthy of it. In order to profit thereby, 
one must first possess the spirit of observation, wide- 
awake attention, that isolates and fixates the acci- 
dent; then, if it is a matter of scientific or practical 
inventions, the penetration that seizes upon rela- 
tions and finds unforeseen resemblances; if it con- 
cerns esthetic productions, the imagination that con- 
structs, organizes, gives life. 

Without repeating an evident truism, although it 
is often misunderstood, we ought to end by remark- 
ing that chance is an occasion for, not an agent of, 
creation. 



CHAPTER V 

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
IMAGINATION 

Is imagination, so often called "a capricious 
faculty," subject to some law? The question thus 
asked is too simple, and we must make it more 
precise. 

As the direct cause of invention, great or small, 
the imagination acts without assignable determina- 
toin; in this sense it is what is known as **spon- 
taneity" — a vague term, which we have attempted 
to make clear. Its appearance is irreducible to any 
law ; it results from the often fortuitous convergence 
of various factors previously studied. 

Leaving aside the moment of origin, does the 
inventive power, considered in its individual and 
specific development, seem to follow any law, or, if 
this term appear too ambitious, does it present, in 
the course of its evolution, any perceptible regu- 
larity ? Observation separates out an empirical law ; 
that is, extracts directly an abridged formula that 
is only a condensation of facts. We may enunciate 
it thus: The creative imagination in its complete 
development passes through two periods separated 



l68 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

by a critical phase : a period of autonomy or efflor- 
escence, a critical moment, a period of definitive con- 
stitution presenting several aspects. 

This formula, being only a summary of experi- 
ence, should be justified and explained by the latter. 
For this purpose we can borrow facts from two dis- 
tinct sources: (a) individual development, which is 
the safest, clearest, and easiest to observe; (b) the 
development of the species, or historical develop- 
ment, according to the accepted principle that phylo- 
genesis and ontogenesis follow the same general 
line. 



First Period. We are already acquainted with 
it: it is the imaginative age. In normal man, it 
begins at about the age of three, and embraces in- 
fancy, adolescence, youth : sometimes a longer, 
sometimes a shorter period. Play, romantic inven- 
tion, mythic and fantastic conceptions of the world 
sum it up first; after that, in most, imagination is 
dependent on the influence of the passions, and 
especially sexual love. For a long time it remains 
without any rational element. 

Nevertheless, little by little, the latter wins a 
place. Reflection — including under the term the 
working of the intelligence — begins very late, grows 
slowly, and the proportion as it asserts itself, gains 
an influence over the imaginative activity and tends 
to reduce it. This growing antagonism is repre- 
sented in the following figure. 



LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 



169 



The curve IM is that of the imagination during 
this first period. It rises at first very slowly, then 
attains a rapid ascent and keeps at a height that 
marks its greatest attainment in this earliest form. 
The dotted line RX represents the rational develop- 







M 


N 






^~^\' 




/ 


y'' 


N' 



R 



ment that begins later, advances much more slowly, 
but progressively, and reaches at X the level of the 
imaginative curve. The two intellectual forms are 
present like two rivals. The position MX on the 
ordinate marks the beginning of the second period. 
Second Period. This is a critical period of inde- 
terminate length, in any case, always much briefer 
than the other two. This critical moment can be 
characterized only by its causes and results. Its 
causes are, in the physiological sphere, the forma- 
tion of an organism and a fully developed brain ; in 
the psychologic order, the antagonism between the 
pure subjectivity of the imagination and the ob- 
jectivity of ratiocinative processes; in other words, 
between mental instability and stability. As for 
the results, they appear only in the third period, the 
resultant of this obscure, metamorphic stage. 



170 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Third Period. It is definite: in some way or 
another and in some degree the imagination has be- 
come rationaHzed, but this change is not reducible 
to a single formula. 

(i) The creative imgination falls, as is indi- 
cated in the figure, where the imagination curve 
MN' descends rapidly toward the line of abcissas 
without ever reaching it. This is the most general 
case; only truly imaginative minds are exceptions. 
One falls little by little into the prose of practical 
life — such is the downfall of love which is treated 
as a phantom, the burial of the dreams of youth, 
etc. This is a regression, not an end; for the cre- 
ative imagination disappears completely in no man; 
it only becomes accessory. 

(2) It keeps up but becomes transformed; it 
adapts itself to the conditions of rational thought; 
it is no longer pure imagination, but becomes a 
mixed form — the fact is indicated in the diagram 
by the union of the two lines, MN, the imagination, 
and XO, the rational. This is the case with truly 
imaginative beings, in whom inventive power long 
remains young and fresh. 

This period of preservation, of definitive constitu- 
tion with rational transformation, presents several 
varieties. First, and simplest, transformation into 
logical form. The creative power manifested in 
the first stage remains true to itself, and always fol- 
lows the same trend. Such are the precocious in- 
ventors, those whose vocation appeared early and 
never changed direction. Invention loses its childish 



LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. I7I 

or juvenile character in becoming virile; there are 
no other changes. Compare Schiller's Robbers, 
written in his teens, with his Wallenstein, dating 
from his fortieth year; or the vague sketches of 
the adolescent James Watt with his inventions as a 
man. 

Another case is the metamorphosis or deviation 
of creative power. We know what numbers of men 
who have left a great name in science, politics, me- 
chanical or industrial invention started out with 
mediocre efforts in music, painting, and especially 
poetry, the drama, and fiction. The imaginative 
impulse did not discover its true direction at the out-* 
set; it imitated while trying to invent. What has 
been said above concerning the chronological devel- 
opment of the imagination would be tiresome repe- ' 
tition. The need of creating followed from the first 
the line of least resistance, where it found certain 
materials ready to hand. But in order to arrive 
to full consciousness of itself it needed more time, 
more knowledge, more accumulated experience. 

We might here ask whether the contrary case is 
also met with; i. e., where the imagination, in this 
third period, would return to the inclinations of the 
first period. This regressive metamorphosis — for I 
cannot style it otherwise — is rare but not without 
examples. Ordinarily the creative imagination, 
when it has passed its adult stage, becomes atten- 
uated by slow atrophy without undergoing serious 
change of form. Nevertheless, I am able to cite the 
case of a well-known scholar who began with a 



172 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

taste for art, especially plastic art, went over rapid- 
ly to literature, devoted his life to biologic studies, 
in which he gained a very deserved reputation ; then, 
in turn, became totally disgusted with scientific re- 
search, came back to literature and finally to the 
arts, which have entirely monopolized him. 

Finally — for there are very many forms — in some 
the imagination, though strong, scarcely passes be- 
yond the first stage, always retains its youthful, al- 
most childish form, hardly modified by a minimum 
of rationality. Let us note that it is not a question 
here of the characteristic ingenuousness of some in- 
ventors, which has caused them to be called "grown- 
up children," but of the candor and inherent sim- 
plicity of the imagination itself. This exceptional 
form is hardly reconcilable except with esthetic cre- 
ation. Let us add the mystic imagination. It could 
furnish examples, less in its religious conceptions, 
which are without control, than in its reveries of a 
scientific turn. Contemporary mystics have invented 
adaptations of the world that take us back to the 
mythology of early times. This prolonged child- 
hood of the imagination, which is, in a word, an 
anomaly, produces curiosities rather than lasting 
works. 

At this third period in the development of the 
imagination appears a second, subsidiary law, that of 
increasing complexify; it follows a progressive line 
from the simple to the complex. Indeed, it is not, 
strictly speaking, a law of the imagination but of 
the rational development exerting an influence on 



LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 1 73 

it by a counter-action. It is a law of the mind that 
knows, not of one that imagines. 

It is needless to show that theoretical and practical 
intelligence develops as an increasing complex. But 
from the time that the mind distinguishes clearly 
between the possible and the impossible, between the 
fancied and the real — which is a capacity wanting 
in primitive man — as soon as man has formed ra- 
toinal habits and has undergone experience the im- 
press of which is ineffaceable, the creative imagina- 
tion is subject, nolens volens, to new conditions; 
it is no longer absolute mistress of itself, it has lost 
the assurance of its infancy, and is under the rules 
of logical thought, which draws it along in its train. 
Aside from the exceptions given above — and even 
they are partial exceptions only — creative power de- 
pends on the ability to understand, which imposes 
upon It its form and developmental law. In liter- 
ature and in the arts comparison between the sim- 
plicity of primitive creations and the complexity of 
advanced civilizations has become commonplace. In 
the practical, technical, scientific and social worlds 
the higher up we go the more we have to know in 
order to create, and in default of this condition we 
merely repeat when we think we are inventing. 

n 

Historically considered, in the species, the devel- 
opment of the imagination follows the same line of 
progress as in the individual. We will not repeat 
it; it would be mere reiteration in a vaguer form 



174 '^HE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

of what we have just said. A few brief notes will 
suffice. 

Vico— whose name deserves to be mentioned here 
because he was the first to see the good that we can 
get from myths for the study of the imagination — 
divided the course of humanity into three successive 
ages : divine or theocratic, heroic or fabulous, hu- 
man or historic, after which the cycle begins over 
again. Although this too hypothetic conception is 
now forgotten, it is sufficient for our purposes. 
What, indeed, are those first two stages that have 
everywiiere and always been the harbingers and pre- 
parers of civilization, if not the triumphant period 
of the imagination? It has produced myths, re- 
ligions, legends, epics and martial narratives, and 
imposing monuments erected in honor of gods and 
heroes. Many nations whose evolution has been in- 
complete have not gone beyond this stage. 

Let us now consider this question under a more 
definite, more limited, better known form — the his- 
tory of intellectual development in Europe since the 
fall of the Roman Empire. It shows very distinctly 
our three periods. 

No one will question the preponderance of the 
imagination during the middle Ages: intensity of 
religious feeling, ceaselessly repeated epidemics of 
superstition; the institution of chivalry, with all its 
accessories ; heroic poetry, chivalric romances ; courts 
of love, efflorescence of Gothic art, the beginning 
of modern music, etc. On the other hand, the quan- 
tify of imagination applied during this epoch to 



LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. 1 75 

practical, industrial, commercial invention is very 
small. Their scientific culture, buried in Latin 
jargon, is made up partly of antique traditions, part- 
ly of fancies ; what the ten centuries added to^ posi- 
tive science is almost nil. Our figure, with its two 
curves, one imaginative, the other rational, thus ap- 
plies just as well to historical development as to in- 
vidual development during this first period. 

No more will anyone question that the Renais- 
sance is a critical moment, a transition period, and a 
transformation analogous to that which we have 
noted in the individual, when there rises, opposed 
to imagination, a rival power. 

Finally, it will be admitted without dissent that 
during the modern period social imagination has be- 
come partly decayed, partly rationalized, under the 
influence of two principal factors — one scientific, the 
other economic. On the one hand the development 
of science, on the other hand the great maritime dis- 
coveries, by stimulating industrial and commercial 
inventions, have given the imagination a new field 
of activity. There have arisen points of attraction 
that have drawn it into other paths, have imposed 
upon it other forms of creation that have often 
been neglected or misunderstood and that we shall 
study in the Third Part. 



THIRD PART 
THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION 



PRELIMINARY 

After having studied the creative imagination in 
its constitutive elements and in its development we 
purpose, in this last part, describing its principal 
forms. This will be neither analytic nor genetic but 
concrete. The reader need not fear wearisome repe- 
tition; our subject is sufficiently complex to permit 
a third treatment without reiteration. 

The expression "creative imagination," like all 
general terms, is an abbreviation and an abstraction. 
There is no "imagination in general," but only men 
who imagine, and who do so in different ways; the 
reality is in them. The diversities in creation, how- 
ever numerous, should be reducible to types that are 
varieties of imagination, and the determination of 
these varieties is analogous to that of character as re- 
lated to will. Indeed, when we have settled upon the 
physiological and psychological conditions of volun- 
tary activity we have only done a work in general 
psychology. Men being variously constituted, their 
modes of action bear the stamp of their individual- 
ity ; in each one there is a personal factor that, what- 
ever its ultimate nature, puts its mark on the will 
and makes it energetic or weak, rapid or slow, stable 



l8o THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

or unstable, continuous or intermittent. The same 
is true of the creative imagination. We cannot 
know it completely without a study of its varieties, 
without a special psychology, toward which the fol- 
lowing chapters are an attempt. 

How are we to determine these varieties? Many 
will be inclined to think that the method is indicated 
in advance. Have not psychologists distinguished, 
according as one or another of image-groups pre- 
ponderates, visual, auditory, motor and mixed 
types? Is not the way clear and is it not well 
enough to go in this direction? However natural 
this solution may appear, it is illusory and can lead 
to naught. It rests on the equivocal use of the 
word ^'imagination," which at one time means mere 
reproduction of images, and at another time creative 
activity, and which, consequently, keeps up the er- 
roneous notion that in the creative imagination 
images, the raw materials, are the essential part. The 
materials, no doubt, are not a negligible element, 
but by themselves they cannot reveal to us the 
species and varieties that have their origin in an 
anterior and superior tendency of mind. We shall 
see in the sequel that the very nature of constructive 
imagination may express itself indifferently in 
sounds, words, colors, lines, and even numbers. The 
method that should allege to settle the various 
orientations of creative activity according to the 
nature of images would no more go to the bottom 
of the matter than would a classification of archi- 
tecture according to the materials employed (as 



PRELIMINARY. l8l 

rock, brick, iron, wood, etc.) with no regard for 
differences of style. 

This method aside, since the determination must 
be made according to the individuality of the archi- 
tect, what method shall we follow? The matter is 
even more perplexing than the study of character. 
Although various authors have treated the latter 
subject (we have attempted it elsewhere), no one 
of the proposed classifications has been universally 
accepted. Nevertheless, despite their differences, 
they coincide in several points, because these have 
the advantage of resting on a common basis — the 
large manifestations of human nature, feeling, do- 
ing, thinking. In our subject I find nothing like 
this and I seek in vain for a point of support. Classi- 
fications are made according to the essential domi- 
nating attributes ; but, as regards the varieties of the 
creative imagination, what are they? 

We may, indeed, as was said above, distinguish 
two great classes — the intuitive and the combining. 
From another point of view we may distinguish 
invention of free range (esthetic, religious, mystic) 
from invention more or less restricted (mechanical, 
scientific, commercial, military, political, social). 
But these two divisions are too general, leading to 
nothing. A true classification should be in touch 
with facts, and this one soars too high. 

Leaving, then, to others, more skilled or more 
fortunate, the task of a rational and systematic de- 
termination, if it be possible, we shall try merely to 
distinguish and describe the principal forms, such as 



l82 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

experience gives them to us, emphasizing those that 
have been neglected or misinterpreted. What fol- 
lows is thus neither a classification nor even a com- 
plete enumeration. 

We shall study at first two general forms of the 
creative imagination — the plastic and the diffluent 
— and later, special forms, determined by their con- 
tent and subject. 

Wundt, in a little-noticed passage of his Physio- 
logical Psychology, has undertaken to determine the 
composition of the "principal forms of talent," 
which he reduces to four: 

The first element is imagination. It may be in- 
tuitive, "that is, conferring on representations a 
clearness of sense-perception," or combining; "then 
it operates on multiple combinations of images." A 
very marked development in both directions at the 
same time is uncommon ; the author assigns reasons 
for this. 

The second element is understanding (Verstand). 
It may be inductive — i. e., inclining toward the col- 
lection of facts in order to draw generalizations 
from them — or deductive, taking general concepts 
and laws to trace their consequences. 

If the intuitive imagination is joined to the in- 
ductive spirit we have the talent for observation of 
the naturalist, the psychologist, the pedagogue, the 
man of affairs. 

If the intuitive imagination is combined with the 
deductive spirit we have the analytical talent of the 



PRELIMINARY. 1 83 

systematic naturalist, of the geometrician. In Lin- 
naeus and Cuvier the intuitive element predomi- 
nates; in Gauss, the analytical element. 

The combining imagination joined to the induc- 
tive spirit constitutes "the talent for invention strict- 
ly so-called," in industry, in the technique of science; 
it gives the artist and the poet the power of compos- 
ing their works. 

The combining imagination plus the deductive 
spirit gives the speculative talent of the mathema- 
tician and philosopher; deduction predominates in 
the former, imagination in the latter.^ 

^Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, 4th German edition, 
Vol. II, pp. 490-95. 



CHAPTER I 

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION 



By ^'plastic imagination'* I understand that which 
has for its special characters clearness and precision 
of form; more explicitly those forms whose ma- 
terials are clear images (whatever be their nature), 
approaching perception, giving the impression of 
reality ; in which, too, there predominate associations 
with objective relations, determinable with precision. 
The plastic mark, therefore, is in the images, and in 
the modes of association of images. In somewhat 
rough terms, requiring modifications which the 
reader himself can make, it is the imagination that 
materializes. 

Between perception — a very complex synthesis of 
qualities, attributes and relations — and conception — 
which is only the consciousness of a quality, quan- 
tity, or relation, often of only a single word accom- 
panied by vague outlines and a latent, potential 
knowledge; between concrete and abstract, the 
image occupies an intermediate position and can run 
from one pole to another, now full of reality, now 



PLASTIC IMAGINATION. 1 85 

almost as poor and pale as a concept. The repre- 
sentation here styled plastic descends towards its 
point of origin ; it is an external imagination, arising 
from sensation rather than from feeling and needing 
to become objective. 

Thus its general characters are easy of determina- 
tion. First and foremost, it makes use of visual 
images; then of motor images; lastly, in practical 
invention, of tactile images. In a word, the three 
groups of images present to a great extent the 
character of externality and objectivity. The clear- 
ness of form of these three groups proceeds from 
their origin, because they arise from sensation well 
determined in space — sight, movement, touch. Plas- 
tic imagination depends most on spatial conditions. 
We shall see that its opposite, diffluent imagination, 
is that which depends least upon that factor, or is 
most free from it. Among these naturally objective 
elements the plastic imagination chooses the most 
objective, which fact gives its creations an air of 
reality and life. 

The second characteristic is inferiority of the af- 
fective element ; it appears only intermittently and is 
entirely blotted out before sensory impression. This 
form of the creative imagination, coming especially 
from sensation, aims especially at sensation. Thus 
it is rather superficial, greatly devoid of that internal 
mark that comes from feeling. 

But if it chance that both sensory and affective 
elements are equal in power; if there is at the same 
time intense vision adequate to reality, and profound 



l86 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

emotion, violent shock, then there arise extraordi- 
nary imaginative personages, Hke Shakespeare, Car- 
lyle, Michelet. It is needless to describe this form 
of imagination, excellent pen-pictures of which have 
been given by the critics ;^ let us merely note that its 
psychology reduces itself to an alternately ascending 
and descending movement between the two limiting 
points of perception and idea. The ascending proc- 
ess assigns to inanimate objects life, desires and feel- 
ings. Thus Michelet : "The great streams of the 
Netherlands, tired with their very long course, per- 
ish as though from weariness in the unfeeling 
ocean. "^ Elsewhere, the great folio begets the oc- 
tavo, "which becomes the parent of the small vol- 
ume, of booklets, of ephemeral pamphlets, invisible 
spirits flying in the night, creating under the very 
eyes of tyrants the circulation of liberty." The de- 
scending process materializes abstractions, gives 
them body, makes them flesh and bone ; the Middle 

* Thus Taine says of Carlyle : "He cannot stick to simple 
expression; at every step he drops into figures, gives body to 
every idea, must touch forms. We see that he is possessed and 
haunted by glittering or saddening visions; in him every 
thought is an explosion; a flood of seething passion reaches 
the boiling-point in his brain, which overflows, and the torrent 
of images runs over the banks and rushes with all its mud and 
all its splendor. He cannot reason, he must paint." Despite 
the vigor of this sketch, the perusal of ten pages of Sartor 
Besartus or of the French Eevolution teaches more in regard 
to the nature of this imagination than all the commentaries. 

' For a point of view in criticism that has seemed correct to 
many on this matter, compare the well-known chapter on the 
"Pathetic Fallacy" by Euskin, in his Modern Painters. (Tr.) 



PLASTIC IMAGINATION. 1 87 

Ages become "a. poor child, torn from the bowels 
of Christianity, born amidst tears, grown up in 
prayer and revery, in anguish of heart, dying with- 
out achieving anything/' In this dazzle of images 
there is a momentary return to primitive animism. 

II 

In order to more fully understand the plastic im- 
agination, let us take up its principal manifestations. 

I. First, the arts dealing with form, where its 
necessity is evident. The sculptor, painter, archi- 
tect, must have visual and tactile-motor images; it 
is the material in which their creations are wrapped 
up. Even leaving out the striking acts requiring 
such a sure and tenacious external vision (portraits 
executed from memory, exact remembrance of faces 
at the end of twenty years, as in the case of Ga- 
varni, etc.^), and limiting ourselves merely to the 
usual, the plastic arts demand an observant imagina- 
tion. For the majority of men the concrete image 
of a face, a form, a color, usually remains vague and 
fleeting; "red, blue, black, white, tree, animal, head, 
mouth, arm, etc., are scarcely more than words, sym- 
bols expressing a rough synthesis. For the painter, 
on the other hand, images have a very high precision 
of details, and w^hat he sees beneath the words or 
in real objects are analyzed facts, positive elements 
of perception and movement."^ 

* Arr§at (Psychologie du peintre, pp. 62 ff.) gives a large 
number of examples of this. 

'Ibid., p. 115. 



l88 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

The role of tactile-motor images is not insignifi- 
cant. There has often been cited the instance of 
sculptors who, becoming blind, have nevertheless 
been able to fashion busts of close resemblance to 
the original. This is memory of touch and of the 
muscular sense, entirely equivalent to the visual 
memory of the portrait painters mentioned above. 
Practical knowledge of design and modeling — i. e., 
of contour and relief — though resulting from nat- 
ural or acquired disposition, depends on cerebral 
conditions, the development of definite sensory- 
motor regions and their connections; and on psy- 
chological conditions — the acquisition and organiza- 
tion of appropriate images. "We learn to paint and 
carve," wrote a contemporary painter, "as we do 
sewing, embroidery, sawing, filing and turning." 
In short, like all manual labor requiring associated 
and combined acts. 

2. Another form of plastic imagination uses 
words as means for evoking vivid and clear impres- 
sions of sight, touch, movement ; it is the poetic or 
literary form. Of it we find in Victor Hugo a fin- 
ished type. As all know, we need only open his 
works at hazard to find a stream of glittering images. 
But what is their nature? His recent biographers, 
guided by contemporary psychology, have well 
shown that they always paint scenes or movements. 
It is unnecessary to give proofs. Some facts have 
a broader range and throw light upon his psychol- 
ogy. Thus we are told that "he never dictates or 
rhymes from memory and composes only in writ- 



PLASTIC IMAGINATION. 189 

ing, for he believes that writing has its own features, 
and he wants to see the words. Theophile Gautier, 
who knows and understands him so well, says : *I 
also believe that in the sentence we need most of all 
an ocular rhythm. A book is made to be read, not 
to be spoken aloud.' " It is added that ^'Victor Hugo 
never spoke his verses but wrote them out and 
would often illustrate them on the margin, as if he 
needed to fixate the image in order to find the ap- 
propriate word."^ 

After visual representations come those of move- 
ment : the steeple pierces the horizon, the mountain 
rends the cloud, the mountain raises himself and 
looks about, "the cold caverns open their mouths 
drowsily" the wind lashes the rock into tears with 
the waterfall, the thorn is an enraged plant, and so 
on indefinitely. 

A more curious fact is the transposition of sonor- 
ous sensations or images of sound, and like them 
without form or figure, into visual and motor 
images : "The rufHes of sound that the fif er cuts out ; 
the flute goes up to alto like a frail capital on a col- 
umn." This thoroughly plastic imagination re- 
mains identical with itself while reducing everything 
spontaneously, unconsciously, to spatial terms. 

In literature this altogether foreign mode of cre- 

* For further details on this point, consult Mabilleau, Victor 
Hugo, 2nd part, chaps. II, III, IV. — Eenouvier, in the book 
devoted to the poet, asserts that "on account of his aptitude 
for representing to himself the details of a figure, order and 
position in space, beyond any present sensation," Victor Hugo 
could have become a mathematician of the highest order. 



IQO THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ative activity has found its most complete expression 
among the Parnassiens and their congeners, whose 
creed is summed up in the formula, faultless form 
and impassiveness. Theophile Gautier claims that "a 
poet, no matter what may be said of him, is a mork- 
nmn; it is not necessary that he have more intelli- 
gence than a laborer and have knowledge of a state 
other than his own, without which he does badly. 
I regard as perfectly absurd the mania that people 
have of hoisting them (the poets) up onto an ideal 
pedestal; nothing is less ideal than a poet. For 
him words have in themselves and outside the 
meaning they express, their own beauty and value, 
just like precious stones not yet cut and mounted in 
bracelets, necklaces and rings; they charm the un- 
derstanding that looks at them and takes them from 
the finger to the little pile where they are put aside 
for future use." If this statement, whether sincere 
or not, is taken literally, I see no longer any differ- 
ence, save as regards the materials employed, be- 
tween the imagination of poets and the imagination 
active in the mechanical arts. For the usefulness 
of the one and the "uselessness" of the other is a 
characteristic foreign to invention itself. 

3. In the teeming mass of myths and religious 
conceptions that the nineteenth century has gathered 
with so much care we could establish various classi- 
fications — according to race, content, intellectual 
level ; and, in a more artificial manner but one suit- 
able for our subject, according to the degree of 
precision or fluidity. 



PLASTIC IMAGINATION. I9I 

Neglecting intermediate forms, we may, indeed, 
divide them into two groups; some are clear in out- 
line, are consistent, relatively logical, resembling 
a definite historical relation ; others are vague, multi- 
form, incoherent, contradictory; their characters 
change into one another, the tales are mixed and are 
imperceptible in the whole. 

The former types are the work of the plastic 
imagination. Such are, if we eliminate oriental in- 
fluences, most of the myths belonging to Greece 
when, on emerging from the earliest period, they 
attained their definite constitution. It has been held 
that the plastic character of these religious concep- 
tions IS an effect of esthetic development: statues, 
bas-reliefs, poetry, and even painting, have made 
definite the attributes of the gods and their history. 
Without denying this influence we must nevertheless 
understand that it is only auxiliary. To those who 
would challenge this opinion let us recall that the 
Hindoos have had gigantic poems, have covered 
their temples with numberless sculptures, and yet 
their fluid mythology is the opposite of the Greek. 
Among the peoples who have incarnated their divin- 
ities in no statue, in no human or animal form, we 
find the Germans and the Celts. But the mythology 
of the former is clear, well kept within large lines; 
that of the latter is fleeting and inconsistent — the 
despair of scholars.^ 

^ As bearing out the position of the author, we may also call 
attention to the fact that while the Hebrew race has had very 
slight development in the plastic arts, yet its mythology has 



192 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

It is, then, certain that myths of the plastic kind 
are the fruits of an innate quahty of mind, of a 
mode of feeHng and of translating, at a given mo- 
ment in its history, the preponderating characters 
of a race; in short, of a form of imagination and 
ultimately of a special cerebral structure. 

4. The most complete manifestation of the plas- 
tic imagination is met with in mechanical invention 
and what is allied thereto, in consequence of the need 
of very exact representations of qualities and rela- 
tions. But this is a specialized form, and, as its im- 
portance has been too often misunderstood, it de- 
serves a separate study. ( See Chapter V, infra. ) 

III 

Such are the principal traits of this type of imag- 
ination : clearness of outline, both of the whole and 
of the details. It is not identical with the form 
called realistic — it is more comprehensive; it is a 
genus of which "realism" is a species. Moreover, 
the latter expression being reserved by custom for 
esthetic creation, I purposely digress in order to 
dwell on this point: that the esthetic imagination 
has no essential character belonging exclusively to 
it, and that it differs from other forms (scientific, 
mechanical, etc.) only in its materials and in its 
end, not in its primary nature. 

On the whole, the plastic imagination could be 
summed up in the expression, clearness in complex- 

always taken a very definite form, even when dealing with the 
vaguest and most abstract subjects. (Tr.) 



PLASTIC IMAGINATION. 193- 

ity. It always preserves the mark of its original 
source — i. e., in the creator and those disposed to 
enjoy and understand him it tends to approach the 
clearness of perception. 

Would it be improper to consider as a variety of 
the genus a mode of representation that could be 
expressed as clearness in simplicity? It is the dry 
and rational imagination. Without depreciating it 
we may say that it is rather a condition of imagi- 
native poverty. We hold with Fouillee that the 
average Frenchman furnishes a good example of it. 
"The Frenchman," says he, "does not usually have 
a very strong imagination. His internal vision has 
neither the hallucinative intensity nor the exuberant 
fancy of the German and Anglo-Saxin mind ; it is an 
intellectual and distant view rather than a sensitive 
resurrection or an immediate contact with, and pos-- 
session of, the things themselves. Inclined to de- 
duce and construct, our intellect excels less in rep- 
resenting to itself real things than in discovering 
relations between possible or necessary things. In 
other words, it is a logical and combining imagina- 
tion that takes pleasure in what has been termed 
the abstract view of life. The Chateaubriands, 
Hugos, Flauberts, Zolas, are exceptional with us. 
We reason more than we imagine."^ 

Its psychological constitution is reducible to two 
elements: slightly concrete images, schemas ap- 
proaching general ideas; for their association, rela- 
tions predominantly rational, more the products of 

* Fouillee, Psychologie du peuple fransais, p. 185. 



194 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the logic of the intellect than of the logic of the 
feelings. It lacks the sudden, violent shock of emo- 
tion that gives brilliancy to images, making them 
arise and grouping them in unforeseen combinations. 
It is a form of invention and construction that is 
more the work of reason than of imagination 
proper. 

Consequently, is it not paradoxical to relate it to 
plastic imagination, as species to genus? It would 
be idle to enter upon a discussion of the subject 
here without attempting a classification; let us 
merely note the likenesses and differences. Both are 
above all objective — the first, because it is sensory; 
the other, because it is rational. Both make use of 
analogous modes of association, dependent more on 
the nature of things than on the personal impression 
of the subject. Opposition exists only on one point : 
the former is made up of vivid images that approach 
perception ; the latter is made up of internal images 
bordering upon concepts. Rational imagination is 
plastic imagination desiccated and simplified. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION 



The diffluent imagination is another general form, 
but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. 
It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images 
that are evoked and joined according to the least 
rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, 
two things for our consideration — the nature of the 
images and of their associations. 

(i) It employs neither the clear-cut, concrete, 
reality-penetrated images of the plastic imagination, 
nor the semi-schematic representations of the ra- 
tional imagination, but those midway in that as- 
cending and descending scale extending from per- 
ception to conception. This determination, how- 
ever, is insufficient, and we can make it more pre- 
cise. Analysis, indeed, discovers a certain class of 
ill-understood images, which I call emotional ab- 
stractions, and which are the proper material for 
the diffluent imagination. These images are re- 
duced to certain qualities or attributes of things, 
taking the place of the whole, and chosen from 



196 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

among the others for various reasons, the origin of 
which is affective. We shall comprehend their na- 
ture better through the following comparison : 

Intellectual or rational abstraction results from 
the choice of a fundamental, or at least principal, 
character, which becomes the substitute for all the 
rest that is omitted. Thus, extension, resistance, 
or impenetrability, come to represent, through sim- 
plification and abbreviation, what we call "matter." 

Emotional abstraction, on the other hand, results 
from the permanent or temporary predominance of 
an emotional state. Some aspect of a thing, essen- 
tial or not, comes into relief, solely because it is in 
direct relation to the disposition of our sensibility, 
with no other preoccupation ; a quality, an attribute 
is spontaneously, arbitrarily selected because it im- 
presses us at the given instant — in the final analysis, 
because it somehow pleases or displeases us. The 
images of this class have an "impressionist" mark. 
They are abstractions in the strict sense — i. e., ex- 
tracts from and simplifications of the sensory data. 
They act less through a direct influence than by 
evoking, suggesting, whispering; they permit a 
glance, a passing glimpse : we may justly call them 
crepuscular or twilight ideas. 

(2) As for the forms of association, the relations 
linking these images, they do not depend so much 
on the order and connections of things as on the 
changing dispositions of the mind. They have a 
very marked subjective character. Some depend on 
the intellectual factor; the most usual are based on 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 197 

chance, on distant and vacillating analogies — fur- 
ther down, even on assonance and alliteration. 
Others depend on the affective factor and are ruled 
by the disposition of the moment: association by- 
contrast, especially those alike in emotional basis, 
which have been previously studied. (First Part, 
Chapter II.) 

Thus the diffluent imagination is, trait for trait, 
the opposite of the plastic imagination. It has a 
general character of inwardness because it arises 
less from sensation than from feeling, often from a 
simple and fugitive impression. Its creations have 
not the organic character of the other, lacking a 
stable center of attraction; but they act by dif- 
fusion and inclusion. 

n 

By its very nature it is de jure, if not de facto, 
excluded from certain territories — if it ventures 
therein it produces only abortions. This is true of 
the practical sphere, which permits neither vague 
images nor approximate constructions; and of the 
scientific world, where the imagination may be used 
only to create a theory or invent processes of dis- 
covery (experiments, schemes of reasoning). Even 
with these exceptions there is still left for it a very 
wide range. 

Let us rapidly pass over some very frequent, very 
well-known manifestations of the diffluent imagina- 
tion — those obliterated forms in which it does not 



198 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

reach complete development and cannot give the 
full measure of its power. 

(i) Revery and related states. This is perhaps 
the purest specimen of the kind, but it remains 
embryonic. 

(2) The romantic turn of mind. This is seen in 
those who, confronted by any event whatever or an 
unknown person, make up, spontaneously, invol- 
untarily, in spite of themselves, a story out of whole 
cloth. I shall later give examples of it according 
to the written testimony of several people.^ In 
whatever concerns themselves or others they create 
an imagined world, which they substitute for the 
real. 

(3) The fantastic mind. Here we come away 
from the vague forms ; the diffluent imagination be- 
comes substantial and asserts itself through its per- 
manence. At bottom this fantastic form is the ro- 
mantic spirit tending toward objectification. The 
invention, which was at first only a thoroughly in- 
ternal construction and recognized as such, aspires 
to become external, to become realized, and when 
it ventures into a world other than its own, one re- 
quiring the rigorous conditions of the practical 
imagination, it is wrecked, or succeeds only through 
chance, and that very rarely. To this class belong 
those inventors, known to everyone, who are fertile 
in methods of enriching themselves or their country 
by means of agricultural, mining, industrial or com- 
mercial enterprises; the makers of the Utopias of 

* See Appendix E. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. I99 

finance, politics, society, etc. It is a form of imagi- 
nation unnaturally oriented toward the practical.^ 

(4) The list increases with myths and religious 
conceptions ; the imagination in its diffuse form here 
finds itself on its own ground. 

Depending on linguistics, it has recently been 
maintained that, among the Aryans at least, the 
imagination created at first only momentary gods 
{Augenhlicksgotter) } Every time that primitive 
man, in the presence of a phenomenon, experienced 
a perceptible emotion, he translated it by a name, 
the manifestation of what was imagined the divine 
part in the emotion felt. "Every religious emotion 
gives rise to a new name — i. e., a new divinity. But 
the religious imagination is never identical with it- 
self; though produced by the same phenomenon, it 
translates itself, at two different moments, by two 
different words." As a consequence, "during the 
early periods of the human race, religious names 
must have been applied not to classes of beings or 
events but to individual beings or events. Before 

^Let us cite merely the case of Balzac who, says one of his 
biographers, **was always odd." He buys a property, in 
order to start a dairy there with * ' the best cows in the world, ' ' 
from which he expects to receive a net income of 3,000 francs. 
In addition, high-grade vegetable gardens, same income; vine- 
yard, with Malaga plants, which should bring about 2,000 fr. 
He has the commune of Sevres deed over to him a walnut tree, 
worth annually 2,000 francs to him, because all the townspeople 
dump their rubbish there. And so on, until at the end of four 
years he sees himself obliged to sell his domain for 3,000 
francs, after spending on it thrice that sum. 

* Usener, Gotternamen, 1896. 



200 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

worshipping the comet or the fig-tree, men must 
have worshiped each one of the comets they beheld 
crossing the sky, everyone of the fig-trees that their 
eyes saw." Later, with advancing capacity for gen- 
erahzation, these ''instantaneous" divinities would 
be condensed into more consistent gods. If this 
hypothesis, which has aroused many criticisms, 
be sound — if this state were met with — it would be 
the ideal type of imaginative instability in the re- 
ligious order. 

Nearer to us, authentic evidence shows that cer- 
tain peoples, at given stages of their history, have 
created such vague, fluid myths, that we cannot 
succeed in delimiting them. Every god can change 
himself into another, different, or even opposite, 
one. The Semitic religions might furnish examples 
of this. There has been established the identity of 
Istar, Astarte, Tanit, Baalath, Derketo, Mylitta, 
Aschera, and still others. But it is in the early 
religion of the Hindoos that we perceive best this 
kaleidoscopic process applied to divine beings. In 
the vedic hymns not only are the clouds now ser- 
pents, now cows and later fortresses (the retreats of 
dark Asuras), but we see Agni (fire) becoming 
Kama (desire or love), and Indra becoming 
Varuna, and so on. "We cannot imagine," says 
Taine, "such a great clearness. The myth here is 
not a disguise, but an expression; no language is 
more true and more supple. It permits a glimpse 
of, or rather, it causes us to discern the forms of 
clouds, movements of the air, changes of seasons. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 20I 

all the happenings of sky, fire, storm: external 
nature has never met a mind so impressionable and 
pliant in which to mirror itself in all the inexhaust- 
ible variety of its appearances. However change- 
able nature may be, this imagination corresponds to 
it. It has no fixed gods; they are changeable like 
the things themselves; they blend one into another. 
Everyone of them is in turn the supreme deity; no 
one of them is a distinct personality; everyone is 
only a moment of nature, able, according to the 
apperception of the moment, to include its neighbor 
or be included by it. In this fashion they swarm 
and teem. Every moment of nature and every 
apperceptive moment may furnish one of them."^ 
Let us, indeed, note that, for the worshiper, the 
god to whom he addresses himself and while he is 
praying, is always the greatest and most powerful. 
The assignment of attributes passes suddenly from 
one to the other, regardless of contradiction. In 
this versatility some writers believe they have dis- 
covered a vague pantheistic conception. Nothing is 
more questionable, fundamentally, than this inter- 
pretation. It is more in harmony with the psychol- 
ogy of these naive minds to assume simply an 
extreme state of "impressionism," explicable by the 
logic of feeling. 

Thus, there is a complete antithesis between the 
imagination that has created the clear-cut and 
definite polytheism of the Greeks and that whence 
have issued those fluctuating divinities that allow 

^Nouveaux Essais de critique, p. 320. 



202 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the presentation of the future doctrine of Maya, of 
universal illusion — another more refined form of 
the diffluent imagination. Finally, let us note that 
the Hellenic imagination realized its gods through 
anthropomorphism — they are the ideal forms of 
human attributes^ — majesty, beauty, power, wis- 
dom, etc. The Hindoo imagination proceeds 
through symbolism : its divinities have several 
heads, several arms, several legs, to symbolize 
limitless intelligence, power, etc. ; or better still, 
animal forms, as e. g., Ganesa, the god of wisdom, 
with the head of the elephant, reputed the wisest 
of animals. 

(5) It would be easy to show by the history of 
literature and the fine arts that the vague forms 
have been preferred according to peoples, times, and 
places. Let us limit ourselves to a single contem- 
porary example that is complete and systematically 
created — the art of the ^'symbolists." It is not here 
a question of criticism, of praise, or even of appre- 
ciation, but merely of a consideration of it as a 
psychological fact likely to instruct us in regard to 
the nature of the diffluent imagination. 

This form of art despises the clear and exact 
representation of the outer world : it replaces it by 
a sort of music that aspires to express the changing 
and fleeting inwardness of the human soul. It is 
the school of the subject "who wants to know only 
mental states." To that end, it makes use of a 

*0r, as it has been expressed, *' human qualities raised to 
their highest power. '^ (Tr.) 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 203 

natural or artificial lack of precision: everything 
floats in a dream, men as well as things, often with- 
out mark in time and space. Something happens, 
one knows not where or when; it belongs to no 
country, is of no period in time: it is the forest, 
the traveler, the city, the knight, the wood; less 
frequently, even He, She, It. In short, all the 
vague and unstable characters of the pure, content- 
less affective state. This process of "suggestion" 
sometimes succeeds, sometimes fails. 

The word is the sign par excellence. As, accord- 
ing to the symbolists, it should give us emotions 
rather than representations, it is necessary that it 
lose, partially, its intellectual function and undergo 
a new adaptation. 

A principal process consists of employing usual 
words and changing their ordinary acceptation, or 
rather, associating them in such a w^ay that they 
lose their precise meaning, and appear vague and 
mysterious: these are the words "written in the 
depths." The writers do not name — they leave it 
for us to infer. "They banish commonplaces 
through lack of precision, and leave to things only 
the power of moving." A rose is not described by 
the particular sensations that it causes, but by the 
general condition that it excites. 

Another method is the employment of new words 
or words that have fallen into disuse. Ordinary 
words retain, in spite of everything, somewhat of 
their customary meaning, associations and thoughts 
codnensed in them through long habit; words for- 



204 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

gotten during four or five centuries escape this con- 
dition — they are coins without fixed vakie. 

Lastly, a still more radical method is the attempt 
tQ give to words an exclusively emotional valuation. 
Unconsciously or as the result of reflection some 
symbolists have come to this extreme trial, which 
the logic of events imposed upon them. Ordinarily, 
thought expresses itself in words; feeling, in ges- 
tures, cries, interjections, change of tone: it finds 
its complete and classic expression in music. The 
symbolists want to transfer the role of sound to 
words, to make of them the instrument for trans- 
lating and suggesting emotion through sound alone : 
words have to act not as signs but as sounds : they 
are "musical notes in the service of an impassioned 
psychology.'* 

All this, indeed, concerns only imagination ex- 
pressing itself in words; but we know that the 
symbolic school has applied itself to the plastic arts, 
to treat them in its own way. The difference, how- 
ever, is in the vesture that the esthetic ideal assumes. 
The pre-Raphaelites have attempted, by effacing 
forms, outlines, semblances, colors, "to cause things 
to appear as mere sources of emotion,*' in a word, to 
paint emotions. 

To sum up — In this form of the diffluent imagi- 
nation the emotional factor exercises supreme 
authority. 

May the type of imagination, the chief manifesta- 
tions of which we have just enumerated, be con- 
sidered as identical with the idealistic imagination? 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 20$ 

This question is similar to that asked in the pre- 
ceding chapter, and permits the same answer. In 
idealistic art, doubtless, the material element fur- 
nished in perception (form, color, touch, effort) is 
minimized, subtilized, sublimated, refined, so as to 
approach as nearly as possible to a purely internal 
state. By the nature of its favorite images, by its 
preference for vague associations and uncertain 
relations, it presents all the characteristics of dif- 
fluent imagination ; but the latter covers a much 
broader field : it is the genus of which the other is 
a species. Thus, it would be erroneous to regard 
the fantastic imagination as idealistic; it has no 
claim to the term : on the contrary, it believes itself 
adapted for practical work and acts in that direc- 
tion. 

In addition, it must be recognized that were we 
to make a complete review of all the forms of 
esthetic creation, we should frequently be embar- 
rassed to classify them, because there are among 
them, as in the case of characters, mixed or com- 
posite forms. Here, for example, are two kinds 
seemingly belonging to the diffluent imagination 
which, however, do not permit it to completely 
include them. 

(a) The "wonder" class (fairy-tales, the Thou- 
sand and One Nights, romances of chivalry, 
Ariosto's poem, etc.) is a survival of the mythic 
epoch, when the imagination is given free play 
without control or check ; whereas, in the course of 
centuries, art — and especially literary creation — 



206 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

becomes, as we have already said, a decadent and 
rationalized mythology. This form of invention 
consists neither of idealizing the external world, 
nor reproducing it with the minuteness of realism, 
but remaking the universe to suit oneself, without 
taking into account natural laws, and despising the 
impossible: it is a liberated realism. Often, in an 
environment of pure fancy, where only caprice 
reigns, the characters appear clear, well-fashioned, 
living. The "wonder" class belongs, then, to the 
vague as well as to the plastic imagination; more 
or less to one or to the other, according to the 
temperament of the creator. 

(b) The fantastic class develops under the same 
conditions. Its chiefs (Hoffmann, Poe, et al.) are 
classed by critics as realists. They are such by 
virtue of their vision, intensified to hallucination, 
the precision in details, the rigorous logic of char- 
acters and events : they rationalize the improbable.* 
On the other hand, the environment is strange, 
shrouded in mystery: men and things move in an 
unreal atmosphere, where one feels rather than per- 
ceives. It is thus proper to remark that this class 
easily glides into the deeply sad, the horrible, terri- 
fying, nightmare-producing, "satanic literature;" 
Goya's paintings of robbers and thieves being gar- 
roted; Wiertz, a genius bizarre to the point of 

*The same statement holds good as regards the ** Tempta- 
tions of Saint Anthony ' ' and other analogous subjects that have 
often attracted painters. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 20y 

extravagance, who paints only suicides or the heads 
of guillotined criminals. 

Religious conceptions could also furnish a fine lot 
of examples: Dante's Inferno, the twenty-eight 
hells of Buddhism, which are perhaps the master- 
pieces of this class, etc. But all this belongs to 
another division of our subject, one that I have 
expressly eliminated from this essay — the pathology 
of the creative imagination. 

Ill 

There yet remains for us tO' study two important 
varieties that I connect with the diffluent imagina- 
tion. 

Numerical Imagination 

Under this head I designate the imagination that 
takes pleasure in the unlimited — in infinity of time 
and space — under the form of number. It seems 
at first that these tv/o terms — imagination and 
number — ^must be mutually exclusive. Every num- 
ber is precise, rigorously determined, since we can 
always reduce it to a relation with unity; it owes 
nothing to fancy. But the series of numbers is 
unlimited in two directions : starting from any term 
in the series, we may go on ever increasingly or 
ever decreasingly. The working of the mind gives 
rise to a possible infinity that is limitless: it thus 
traces a route for the movement of the imagination. 
The number, or rather the series of numbers, is less 
an object than a vehicle. 



208 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

This form of imagination is produced in two 
principal ways — in religious conceptions and cos- 
mogonies, and in science. 

(i) Numerical imagination has nowhere been 
more exuberant than among the peoples of the 
Orient. They have played with number with mag- 
nificent audacity and prodigality. Chaldean cos- 
mogony relates that Oannes, the Fish-god, devoted 
259,200 years to the education of mankind, then 
came a period of 432,000 years taken up with the 
reigns of mythical personages, and at the end of 
these 691,000 years, the deluge renewed the face 
of the earth. The Egyptians, also, were liberal with 
millions of years, and in the face of the brief and 
limited chronology of the Greeks (another kind of 
imagination) were wont to exclaim, "You, O 
Greeks, you are only children!'* But the Hindoos 
have done better than all that. They have invented 
enormous units to serve as basis and content for 
their numerical fancies : the Koti, equivalent to ten 
millions; the Kalpa (or the age of the world be- 
tween two destructions), 4,328,000,000 years. 
Each Kalpa is merely one of 365 days of divine 
life : I leave to the reader, if he is so inclined, the 
work of calculating this apalling number. The 
Djanas divide time into two periods, one ascending, 
the other descending: each is of fabulous duration, 
2,000,000,000,000,000 oceans of years; each ocean 
being itself equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000 
years. "If there were a lofty rock, sixteen miles in 
each dimension, and one touched it once in a hun- 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 209 

dred years with a bit of the finest Benares linen, it 
would be reduced to the size of a wango-stone 
before a fourth of one of these Kalpas had rolled 
by." In the sacred books of Buddhism, poor, dry, 
colorless, as they ordinarily are, imagination in its 
numerical forms is triumphant. The Lalitavistara 
is full of nomenclatures and enumerations of fatigu- 
ing monotony : Buddha is seated on a rock shaded 
by 100,000 parasols, surrounded by minor gods 
forming an assemblage of 68,000 Kotis (i. e., 680, 
000,000 persons), and — this surpasses all the rest 
— "he had experienced many vicissitudes during 
10,100,000,000 Kalpas." This makes one dizzy. 

(2) Numerical imagination in the sciences does 
not take on these delirious forms ; it has the advan- 
tage of resting on an objective basis: it is the 
substitute of an unrepresentable reality. Scientific 
culture, which people often accuse of stifling imagi- 
nation, on the contrary opens to it a field much 
vaster than esthetics. Astronomy delights in infini- 
tudes of time and space: it sees worlds arise, burn 
at first with the feeble light of a nebular mass, glow 
like suns, become chilled, covered with spots, and 
then become condensed. Geology follows the devel- 
opment of our earth through upheavals and cata- 
clysms : it foresees a distant future when our globe, 
deprived of the atmospheric vapors that protect it, 
will perish of cold. The hypotheses of physics and 
chemistry in regard to atoms and molecules are not 
less reckless than the speculations of the Hindoo 
imagination. "Physicists have determined the vol- 



2IO THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ume of a molecule, and referring to the numbers 
that they give, we find that a cube, a millimeter 
each way (scarcely the volume of a silkworm's 
egg), would contain a number of molecules at least 
equal to the cube of 10,000,000 — i. e., unity fol- 
lowed by twenty-one zeros. One scientist has cal- 
culated that if one had to count them and could 
separate in thought a million per second, it would 
take more than 250,000,000 years : the being who 
commenced the task at the time that our solar 
system could have been no more than a formless 
nebula, would not yet have reached the end.'*^ 
Biology, with its protoplasmic elements, its plastids, 
gemmules, hypotheses on hereditary transmission 
by means of infinitesimal subdivisions; the theory 
of evolution, which speaks off-hand of periods of a 
hundred thousand years; and many other scientific 
theses that I omit, offer fine material for the numer- 
ical imagination. 

More than one scientist has even made use of this 
form of imagination for the pleasure of developing 
a purely fanciful notion. Thus Von Baer, suppos- 
ing that we might perceive the portions of duration 
in another way, imagines the changes that would 
result therefrom in our outlook on nature: "Sup- 
pose we were able, within the length of a second, to 
note 10,000 events distinctly, instead of barely 10, 
as now; if our life were then destined to hold the 
same number of impressions, it might be 1,000 times 

*R. Dubois, Legons de physiologic g^nercde et compar6e, p. 
286. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 211 

as short. We should live less than a month, and 
personally know nothing of the change of seasons. 
If born in winter, we should believe in summer as 
we now believe in the heats of the Carboniferous 
era. The motions of organic beings would be so 
slow to our senses as to be inferred, not seen. The 
sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost 
free from change, and so on. But now reverse the 
hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 
i,oooth part of the sensations that we get in a given 
time, and consequently to live i,ooo times as long. 
Winters and summers will be to him like quarters 
of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter-growing 
plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear 
instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and 
fall from the earth like restlessly boiling water 
springs; the motions of animals will be as invisible 
as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon- 
balls; the sun will scour through the sky like a 
meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc."^ 

The psychologic conditions of this variety of the 
creative imagination are, then, these: Absence of 
limitation in time and space, whence the possibility 
of an endless movement in all directions, and the 
possibility of filling either with a myriad of dimly- 
perceived events. These events not being susceptible 
of clear representation as to their nature and 
quantity, escaping even a schematic representation, 
the imagination makes its constructions with substi- 
tutes that are, in this case, numbers. 
*Von Baer, in James, Psychology, I, 639. 



212 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

IV 

Musical Imagination 

Musical imagination deserves a separate mono- 
graph. As the task requires, in addition to psycho- 
logical capacity, a profound knowledge of musical 
history and technique, it cannot be undertaken here. 
I purpose only one thing, namely, to show that it 
has its own individual mark — that it is the type of 
affective imagination. 

I have elsewhere^ attempted to prove that, con- 
trary to the general opinion of psychologists, there 
exists, in many men at least, an affective memory; 
that is, a memory of emotions strictly so called, and 
not merely of the intellectual conditions that caused 
and accompanied them. I hold that there exists 
also a form of the creative imagination that is 
purely emotional — the contents of which are wholly 
made up of states of mind, dispositions, wants, aspi- 
rations, feelings, and emotions of all kinds, and that 
it is the characteristic of the composer of genius, of 
the born musician. 

The musician sees in the world what concerns 
him. "He carries in his head a coherent system of 
tone-images, in which every element has its place 
and value ; he perceives delicate differences of sound, 
of timbre; he succeeds, through exercise, in pene- 
trating into their most varied combinations, and the 
knowledge of harmonious relations is for him what 
design and the knowledge of color are for the 

* Psychology of the Emotions, Part I, Chapter IX. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 213 

painter: intervals and harmony, rhythm and tone- 
qualities are, as it were, standards to which he 
relates his present perceptions and which he causes 
to enter into the marvelous constructions of his 
fancy."' 

These sound-elements and their combinations are 
the words of a special language that is very clear 
for some, impenetrable for others. People have 
spoken to a tiresome extent of the vagueness of 
musical expression ; some have been pleased to hold 
that every one may interpret it in his own way. We 
must surely recognize that emotional language does 
not possess the precision of intellectual language; 
but in music it is the same as in any other idiom : 
there are those who do not understand at all ; those 
who half understand and consequently always give 
wrong renderings ; and those who understand well — 
and in this last category there are grades as varying 
as the aptitude for perceiving the delicate and subtle 
shades of speech. 

*Arr6at, M6moire et Imagination, p. 118. 

'Mendelssohn wrote to an author who composed verses for 
his Lieder: ** Music is more definite than speech, and to want 
to explain it hj means of words is to make the meaning 
obscure. I do not think that words suffice for that end, and 
were I persuaded to the contrary, I would not compose music. 
There are people who accuse music of being ambiguous, who 
allege that words are always understood: for me it is just the 
other way; words seem to me vague, ambiguous, unintelligible, 
if we compare them to the true music that fills the soul with 
a thousand things better than words. What the music that 
I like expresses to me seems to me too definite, rather than too 
indefinite, for anyone to be able to match words to it. ' ' 



214 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

The materials necessary for this form of imagi- 
native construction are gathered slowly. Many 
centuries passed between the early ages when man's 
voice and the simple instruments imitating it trans- 
lated simple emotions, to the period when the efforts 
of antiquity and of the middle ages finally furnished 
the musical imagination with the means of express- 
ing itself completely, and allowed complex and dif- 
ficult constructions in sound. The development of 
music — slow and belated as compared to the other 
arts — has perhaps been due, in part at least, to the 
fact that the affective imagination, its chief province 
(imitative, descriptive, picturesque music being only 
an episode and accessory), being made up, contrary 
to sensorial imagination, of tenuous, subtle, fugitive 
states, has been long in seeking its methods of 
analysis and of expression. However it be, Bach 
and the contrapuntists, by their treatment in an 
independent manner of the different voices consti- 
tuting harmony, have opened a new path. Hence- 
forth melody will be able to develop and give rise 
to the richest combinations. We shall be able to 
associate various melodies, sing them at the same 
time, or in alternation, assign them to various instru- 
ments, vary indefinitely the pitch of singing and 
concerted voices. The boundless realm of musical 
combinations is open; it has been worth while to 
take the trouble to invent. Modern polyphony with 
its power of expressing at the same time different, 
even opposing, feelings is a marvelous instrument 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 21$ 

for a form of imagination which, alien to the forms 
clear-cut in space, moves only in time. 

What furnishes us the best entrance into the 
psychology of this form of imagination is the nat- 
ural transposition operative in musicians. It con- 
sists in this : An external or internal impression, 
any occurrence whatever, even a metaphysical idea, 
undergoes change of a certain kind, which the fol- 
lowing examples will make better understood than 
any amount of commentary. 

Beethoven said of Klopstock's Messiah, "always 
maestoso, written in D -flat major/' In his fourth 
symphony he expressed musically the destiny of 
Napoleon; in the ninth symphony he tries to give 
a proof of the existence of God. By the side of a 
dead friend, in a room draped in black, he impro- 
vises the adagio of the sonata in C sharp minor. 
The biographers of Mendelssohn relate analogous 
instances of transposition under musical form. 
During a storm that almost engulfed George Sand, 
Chopin, alone in the house, under the influence of 
his agony, and half unconsciously, composed one of 
his Preludes. The case of Schumann is perhaps 
the most curious of all: "From the age of eight, 
he would amuse himself with sketching what might 
be called musical portraits, drawing by means of 
various turns of song and varied rhythms the shades 
of character, and even the physical peculiarities, of 
his young comrades. He sometimes succeeded in 
making such striking resemblances that all would 



2l6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

recognize, with no further designation, the figure 
indicated by the skillful fingers that genius was 
already guiding." He said later: *1 feel myself 
affected by all that goes on in the world — men, 
politics, literature; I reflect on all that in my own 
way and it issues outwards in the form of music. 
That is why many of my compositions are so hard 
to understand: they relate to events of distant 
interest, though important; but everything remark- 
able that is furnished me by the period I must 
express musically." Let us recall again that Weber 
interpreted in one of the finest scenes of his Frey- 
schiitz (the bullet-casting scene) "a landscape that 
he had seen near the falls of Geroldsau, at the hour 
when the moon's rays cause the basin in which the 
water rushes and boils to glisten like silver."^ In 
short, the events go into the composer's brain, mix 
there, and come out changed into a musical struc- 
ture. 

The plastic imagination furnishes us a counter- 
proof: it transposes inversely. The musical im- 
pression traverses the brain, sets it in turmoil, but 
comes out transformed into visual images. We 
have already cited examples from Victor Hugo (ch. 
I) ; Goethe, we know, had poor musical gifts. After 
having the young Mendelssohn render an overture 
from Bach, he exclaimed, "How pompous and grand 
that is ! It seems to me like a procession of grand 

* Oelzelt-Newin, op. cit., pp. 22-23. For analogous facts 
from contemporary musicians, see Paulhan, Bev. Phil., 1898, 
pp. 234-35. 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 2\y 

personages, in gala attire, descending the steps of 
a gigantic staircase." 

We might generalize the question and ask 
whether or no there exists a natural antagonism 
between true musical imagination and plastic imagi- 
nation. An answer in the affirmative seems scarcely 
liable to be challenged. I had undertaken an inves- 
tigation which, at the outset, made for a different 
goal. It happens that it answered clearly enough 
the question propounded above : the conclusion has 
arisen of itself, unsought ; which fact saves me from 
any charge of a preconceived opinion. 

The question asked orally of a large number of 
people was this : "Does hearing or even remember- 
ing a bit of symphonic music excite visual images 
in you and of what kind are they?" For self evi- 
dent reasons dramatic music was expressly ex- 
cluded: the appearance of the theater, stage, and 
scenery impose on the observer visual perceptions 
that have a tendency to be repeated later in the 
form of memories. 

The result of observation and of the collected 
answers are summed up as follows: 

Those who possess great musical culture and^ 
this is by far more important — taste or passion for 
music, generally have no visual images. If these 
arise, it is only momentarily, and by chance. I give 
a few of the answers : "I see absolutely nothing; I 
am occupied altogether with the pleasure of the 
music: I live entirely in a world of sound. In 
accordance with my knowledge of harmony, I 



2l8 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

analyze the harmonies but not for long. I follow 
the development of the phrasing." "I see nothing: 
I am given up wholly to my impressions. I believe 
that the chief effect of music is to heighten in every- 
one the predominating feelings." 

Those who possess little musical culture, and 
especially those having little taste for music, have 
very clear visual representations. It must neverthe- 
less be admitted that it is very hard to investigate 
these people. Because of their anti-musical natures, 
they avoid concerts, or at the most, resign them- 
selves to sit through an opera. However, since the 
nature and quality of the music does not matter 
here, we may quote : "Hearing a Barbary organ in 
the street, I picture the instrument to myself. I see 
the man turning the crank. If military music sounds 
from afar, I see a regiment marching." An excel- 
lent pianist plays for a friend Beethoven's sonata in 
C sharp minor, putting into its execution all the 
pathos of which he is capable. The other sees in it 
"the tumult and excitement of a fair." Here the 
musical rendering is misinterpreted through misapH 
prehension. I have several times noted this — in 
people familiar with design or painting, music calls 
up pictures and various scenes ; one of these persons 
says that he is "besieged by visual images." Here 
the hearing of music evidently acts as excitant.^ 

* For the sake of brevity and clearness I do not give here the 
observations and evidence. They will be found at the end of 
this work, as Appendix D. 

Under the title * * An experimental test of musical expressive- 



DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION. 2ig 

In a word, insofar as it is permissible in psychol- 
ogy to make use of general formulas — and with the 
proviso that they apply to most, not to all cases — 
we may say that during the working of the musical 
imagination the appearance of visual images is the 
exception; that when this form of imagination is 
weak, the appearance of images is the rule. 

Furthermore, this result of observation is alto- 
gether in accord with logic. There is an irreducible 
antithesis between affective imagination, the char- 
acteristic of which is interiority, and visual imagi- 
nation, basically objective. Intellectual language — 



9y" Gilman, in American Journal of Psychology, vol. IV, 
No. 4, and vol. V, No. 1 (1892-3), has studied from another 
point of view the effect of music on various listeners. Eleven 
selections were given; I note that three or four at the most 
excited visual images— ten (perhaps eleven), emotional states. 
More recently, the Psychological Beview (September, 1898, pp. 
463 ff.) has published a personal observation of Macdougal in 
which sight-images accompany the hearing of music only excep- 
tionally and under special conditions. The author characterizes 
himself as a ' * poor visuaUzer j " he declares that music arouses 
in him only very rarely visual representations; *'even then 
they are fragmentary, consisting of simple forms without bond 
between them, appearing on a dark background, remaining 
visible for a moment or two, and soon disappearing.'' But, 
having gone to the concert fatigued and jaded, he sees nothing 
during the first number: the visions begin during the andante 
of the second, and accompany "in profusion" the rendering 
of the third. (See Appendix D.) May we not assume that the 
state of fatigue, by lowering the vital tone, which is the basis 
of the emotional life, likewise diminishes the tendency of affec- 
tive dispositions to arise again under the form of memory! 
On the other hand, sensory images remain without opposition 
and come to the front; at least, unless they are reenforced by 
a state of semi-morbid excitation. 



220 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Speech — is an arrangement of words that stand for 
objects, qualities, relations, extracts of things: in 
order to be understood they must call up in con- 
sciousness the corresponding images. Emotional 
language — music — is an appropriate ordering of 
successive or simultaneous sounds, of melodies and 
harmonies that are signs of affective states : in order 
to be understood, they must call up in consciousness 
the corresponding affective modifications. But, in 
the non-musically inclined, the evocative power is 
small — sonorous combinations excite only superficial 
and unstable internal states. The exterior excita- 
tion, that of the sounds, follows the line of least 
resistance, and acting according to the psychic na- 
ture of the individual, tends to arouse objective 
images, pictures, visual representations, well or ill 
adapted. 

To sum up : In contrast to sensorial imagination, 
wdiich has its origin without, affective imagination 
begins within. The stiiif of its creation is found in 
the mental states enumerated above, and in their 
innumerable combinations, which it expresses and 
fixes in language peculiar to itself, of which it has 
been able to make wonderful use. Taking it alto- 
gether, the only great division possible between the 
different types of imagination is perhaps reducible 
to this : To speak more exactly, there are exterior 
and interior imaginations. These two chapters have 
given a sketch of them. There now remains for us 
to study the less general forms of the creative 
power. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MYSTIC IMAGINATION 

Mystic Imagination deserves a place of honor, as 
it is the most complete and most daring of purely 
theoretic invention. Related to diffluent imagina- 
tion, especially in the latter's affective form, it has 
its own special characters, which we shall try to 
separate out. 

Mysticism rests essentially on two modes of 
mental Hfe — feeling, which we need not study; and 
imagination, which, in the present instance, repre- 
sents the intellectual factor. Whether the part of 
consciousness that this state of mind requires and 
permits be imaginative in nature and nothing else 
it is easy to find out. Indeed, the mystic considers 
the data of sense as vain appearances, or at the most 
as signs revealing and frequently laying bare the 
world of reality. He therefore finds no solid sup- 
port in perception. On the other hand, he scorns 
reasoned thought, looking upon it as a cripple, halt- 
ing half-way. He makes neither deductions nor 
inductions, and does not draw conclusions after the 
method of scientific hypotheses. The conclusion. 



222 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

then, is that he imagines, i. e., that he reaHzes a 
construction in images that is for him knowledge 
of the world; and he never proceeds, and does not 
proceed here, save ex analogia hominis. 



The root of the mystic imagination consists of a 
tendency to incarnate the ideal in the sensible, to 
discover a hidden "idea" in every material phe- 
nomenon or occurrence, to suppose in things a supra- 
natural principle that reveals itself to whoever may 
penetrate to it. Its fundamental character, from 
which the others are derived, is thus a way of think- 
ing symhoUcally; but the algebraist also thinks by 
means of symbols, yet is not on that account a 
mystic. The nature of this symbolism must, then, 
be determined. 

In doing so, let us note first of all that our images 
— understanding the word ''image" in its broadest 
sense — may be divided into two distinct groups: 

( 1 ) Concrete images, earliest to be received, being 
representations of greatest power, residues of our 
perceptions, with which they have a direct and im- 
mediate relation. 

(2) Symbolic images, or signs, of secondary ac- 
quirement, being representations of lesser power, 
having only indirect and mediate relations with 
things. 

Let us make the differences between the two clear 
by a few simple examples. 

Concrete images are: In the visual sphere, the 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 223 

recollection of faces, monuments, landscapes, etc.; 
in the auditory sphere, the remembrance of the 
sounds of the sea, wind, the human voice, a melody, 
etc. ; in the motor sphere, the tossings one feels when 
resting after having been at sea, the illusions of 
those who have had limbs amputated, etc. 

Symbolic images are: In the visual order, writ- 
ten words, ideographic signs, etc.; in the auditory 
order, spoken words or verbal images ; in the motor 
order, significant gestures, and even better, the 
finger-language of deaf-mutes. 

Psychologically, these two groups are not iden- 
tical in nature. Concrete images result from a per- 
sistence of perceptions and draw from the latter all 
their validity ; symbolic images result from a mental 
synthesis, from an association of perception and 
image, or of image and image. If they have not 
the same origin, no more do they disappear in the 
same way, as is proven by very numerous examples 
of aphasia. 

The originality of mystic imagination is found in 
this fact : It transforms concrete images into sym- 
bolic images, and uses them as such. It extends 
this process even to perceptions, so that all mani- 
festations of nature or of human art take on a value 
as signs or symbols. We shall later find numerous 
examples of this. Its mode of expression is neces- 
sarily synthetic. In itself, and because of the mate- 
rials that it makes use of, it differs from the affective 
imagination previously described; it also differs 



224 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

from sensuous imagination, which makes use of 
forms, movements, colors, as having a vahie of their 
own; and from the imagination developing in the 
functions of words, through an analytic process. .It 
has thus a rather special mark. 

Other characters are related to this one of sym- 
bolism, or else are derived from it, viz. : 

( I ) An external character : the manner of writing 
and of speaking, the mode of expression, whatever 
it is. *The dominant style among mystics," says 
von Hartmann, "is metaphorical in the extreme' — 
now flat and ordinary, more often turgid and em- 
phatic. Excess of imagination betrays itself there, 
ordinarily, in the thought and in the form in which 
that is rendered. ... A sign of mysticism 
which it has been believed may often be taken as an 
essential sign, Is obscurity and unintelligibility of 
language. We find it in almost all those who have 
written."^ We might add that even in the plastic 
arts, symbolists and ''decadents" have attempted, as 
far as possible, methods that merely indicate and 
suggest or hint Instead of giving real, definite ob- 
jects: which fact makes them inaccessible to the 
greater number of people. 

This characteristic of obscurity is due to two 
causes. First, mystical Imagination Is guided by 
the logic of feeling, which Is purely subjective, full 
of leaps, jerks, and gaps. Again, it makes use of 
the language of images, especially visual images — 
a language whose ideal is vagueness, just as the 

^Philosophy of the Unconscious, I, part 2, ch. IX. 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 225 

ideal of verbal language is precision. All this can 
be summed up in a phrase — the subjective character 
inherent in the symbol. While seeming to speak 
like everyone else, the mystic uses a personal idiom : 
things becoming symbols at the pleasure of his 
fancy, he does not use signs that have a fixed and 
universally admitted value. It is not surprising if 
we do not understand him. 

(2) An extraordinary abuse of analogy and com- 
parison in their various forms (allegory, parable, 
etc.) — a natural consequence of a mode of thinking 
that proceeds by means of symbols, not concepts. 
It has been said, and rightly, that "the only force 
that makes the vast field of mysticism fruitful is 
analogy.*'^ Bossuet, a great opponent of mystics, 
had already remarked : "One of the characteristics 
of these authors is the pushing of allegories to the 
extreme limit." With warm imagination, having at 
their disposal overexcited senses, they are lavish of 
changes of expressions and figures, hoping thereby 
to explain the world's mysteries. We know to what 
inventive labors the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, 
and other sacred books have given rise. The dis- 
tinction between literal and figurative sense, which 
is boundlessly arbitrary, has given commentators a 
freedom to imagine equal to that of the myth- 
creators. 

All this is yet very reasonable; but the imagina- 
tion left to itself stops at no extravagance. After 

* J. Darmesteter, in Eec6jac, Essai sur les fondements de la 

connaissance mystique, p. 124. 



226 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

having strained the meaning of expressions, the 
imaginative mind exercises itself on words and 
letters. Thus, the caballists would take the first or 
the last letters of the words composing a verse, and 
would form with them a new word which was to 
reveal the hidden meaning. Again, they would 
substitute for the letters composing words the num- 
bers that these letters represent in the Hebrew 
numerical system and form the strangest combina- 
tions with them. In the Zohar, all the letters of the 
alphabet come before God, each one begging to be 
chosen as the creative element of the universe. 

Let us also bring to mind numerical mysticism, 
different from numerical imagination heretofore 
studied. Here, number is no longer the means that 
mind employs in order to soar in time and space; it 
becomes a symbol and material for fanciful con- 
struction. Hence arise those "sacred numbers" 
teeming in the old oriental religions : — 3, symbol of 
the trinity; 4, symbol of the cosmic elements; 7, 
representing the moon and the planets, etc.^ Be- 
sides these fantastic meanings, there are more com- 
plicated inventions — calculating, from the letters of 
one's name, the years of life of a sick person, the 
auspices of a marriage, etc. The Pythagorean 
philosophy, as Zeller has shown, is the systematic 
form of this mathematical mysticism, for which 

*In such notions may perhaps be best found the genesis of 
the present superstitions in regard to "lucky'' and '* un- 
lucky" numbers, like the number 13, which have such per- 
sistence. (Tr.) 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 22"] 

numbers are not symbols of quantitative relations, 
but the very essence of things. 

This exaggerated symbolism, which makes the 
works of mystics so fragile, and which permits the 
mind to feed only on glimpses, has nevertheless an 
undeniable source of energy in its enchanting capac- 
ity to suggest. Without doubt suggestion exists 
also in art, but much more weakly, for reasons that 
we shall indicate. 

(3) Another characteristic of mystic imagination 
is the nature and the great degree of belief accom- 
panying it. We already know^ that when an image 
enters consciousness, even in the form of a recol- 
lection, of a purely passive reproduction, it appears 
at first, and for a moment, just as real as a percept. 
Much more so, in the case of imaginative construc- 
tions. But this illusion has degrees, and with 
mystics it attains its maximum. 

In the scientific and practical world, the work of 
the imagination is accompanied by only a condi- 
tional and provisional belief. The construction in 
images must justify its existence, in the case of the 
scientist, by explaining; and in the case of the man 
of affairs, by being embodied in an invention that is 
useful and answers its purpose. 

In the esthetic field, creation is accompanied by 
a momentary belief. Fancy, remarks Groos, is 
necessarily joined to appearance. Its special char- 
acter does not consist merely in freedom in images ; 
what distinguishes it from association and from 

*See Part Two, chapter II. 



228 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

memory is this — that what is merely representative 
is taken for the reality. The creative artist has a 
conscious illusion (bewusste Selbsttdnschung) : the 
esthetic pleasure is an oscillation between the appear- 
ance and the reality.^ 

Mystic imagination presupposes an unconditioned 
and permanent belief. Mystics are believers in the 
true sense — they have faith. This character is 
peculiar to them, and has its origin in the intensity 
of the affective state that excites and supports this 
form of invention. Intuition becomes an object of 
knowledge only when clothed in images. There has 
been much dispute as to the objective value of those 
symbolic forms that are the working material of the 
mystic imagination. This contest does not concern 
us here; but we may make the positive statement 
that the constructive imagination has never obtained 
such a frequently hallucinatory form as in the 
mystics. Visions, touch-illusions, external voices, 
inner and "wordless" voices, which we now regard 
as psycho-motor hallucinations — all that we meet 
every moment in their works, until , they become 
commonplace. But as to the nature of these psychic 
states there are only two solutions possible — one, 
naturalistic, that we shall indicate; the other, super- 
natural, which most theologians hold, and which 
regards these phenomena as valid and true revela- 
tion. In either case, the mystic imagination seems 
to us naturally tending toward objectification. It 
tends outwardly, by a spontaneous movement that 
* Groos, Die Spiele der Thiere, pp. 308-312. 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 229 

places it on the same level as reality. Whichever 
conclu^on we adopt, no imaginative type has the 
same great gift of energy and permanence in belief. 

II 

Mystic imagination, working along the lines pecu- 
liar to it, produces cosmological, religious, and 
metaphysical constructions, a summary exposition 
of which will help us understand its true nature. 

(i) The all-embracing cosmological form is the 
conception of the world by a purely imaginative 
being. It is rare, abnormal, and is nowadays met 
with only in a few artists, dreamers, or morbidly 
esthetic persons, as a kind of survival and tem- 
porary form. Thus, Victor Hugo sees in each letter 
of the alphabet the pictured imitation of one of the 
objects essential to human knowledge: ^'A is the 
head, the gable, the cross-beam, the arch, arx; D 
is the back, dos; E is the basement, the console, etc., 
so that man's house and its architecture, man's body 
and its structure, and then justice, music, the 
church, war, harvesting, geometry, mountains, etc. 
— all that is comprised in the alphabet through the 
mystic virtue of form."^ Even more radical is 
Gerard de Nerval (who, moreover, was frequently 
subject to hallucinations) : "At certain times every- 
thing takes on for me a new aspect — secret voices 
come out of plant, tree, animals, from the humblest 
insects, to caution and encourage me. Formless and 
lifeless objects have mysterious turns the meaning 

^Mabilleau, oy. oit., p. 132. 



230 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

of which I understand." To others, contemporaries, 
**the real world is a fairy land." 

The middle ages — a period of lively imagination 
and slight^rational culture — overflowed in this direc- 
tion. **Many thought that on this earth everything 
is a sign, a figure, and that the visible is worth 
nothing except insofar as it covers up the invisible." 
Plants, animals — there is nothing that does not 
become subject for interpretation; all the members 
of the body are emblems; the head is Christ, the 
hairs are the saints, the legs are the apostles, the 
eye is contemplation, etc. There are extant special 
books in which all that is seriously explained. Who 
does not know the symbolism of the cathedrals, and 
the vagaries to which it has given rise ? The towers 
are prayer, the columns the apostles, the stones and 
the mortar the assembly of the faithful ; the windows 
are the organs of sense, the buttresses and abut- 
ments are the divine assistance; and so on to the 
minutest detail. 

In our day of intense intellectual development, it 
is not given to many to return sincerely to a mental 
condition that recalls that of the earliest times. Even 
if we come near it, we still find a difference. Primi- 
tive man puts life, consciousness, activity, into 
everything ; symbolism does likewise, but it does not 
believe in an autonomous, distinct, particular soul 
inherent in each thing. The absence of abstraction 
and generalization, characteristic of humanity in its 
early beginnings, when it peoples the world with 
myriads of animate beings, has disappeared. Every 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 23I 

source of activity revealed by symbols appears as a 
fragmentary manifestation; it descends from a 
single primary, personal or impersonal, spring. At 
the root of this imaginative construction there is 
always either theism or pantheism. 

(2) Mystical imagination has often and erron- 
eously been identified with religious imagination. 
Although it may be held that every religion, no 
matter how dull and poor, presupposes a latent 
mysticism, because it supposes an Unknown beyond 
the reach of sense, there are religions very slightly 
mystical in fact — those of savages, strictly utilita- 
rian; among barbarians, the martial cults of the 
Germans and the Aztecs; among civilized races, 
Rome and Greece.^ However, even though the 
mystic imagination is not confined to the bounds of 
religious thought, history shows us that there it 
attains its completest expansion. 

To be brief, and to keep strictly within our sub- 
ject, let us note that in the completely developed 
great religions there has arisen opposition between 
the rationalists and the imaginative expounders, 
between the dogmatists and the mystics. The for- 
mer, rational architects, build by means of abstract 
ideas, logical relations and methods, by deduction 
and induction ; the others, imaginative builders, care 

* If we leave out oriental influences and the Mysteries, which, 
according to Aristotle, were not dogmatic teaching, but a 
show, an assemblage of symbols, acting by evocation, or sug- 
gestion, following the special mode of mystic imagination that 
we already know. 



232 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

little for this learned magnificence — they excel in 
vivid creations because the moving energy with 
them is in their feelings, *'in their hearts;" because 
they speak a language made up of concrete images, 
and consequently their wholly symbolic speech is at 
the same time an original construction. The mystic 
imagination is a transformation of the mythic 
imagination, the myth changing into symbols. It 
cannot escape the necessity of this. On the other 
hand, the affective states cannot longer remain 
vague, diffuse, purely internal; they must become 
fixed in time and space, and condensed into images 
forming a personality, legend, event, or rite. Thus, 
Buddha represents the tendencies towards pity and 
resignation, summing up the aspirations for final 
rest. On the other hand, abstract ideas, pure con- 
cepts, being repugnant to the mystic's nature, it is 
also necessary that they take on images through 
which they may be seen — e. g., the relations between 
God and man, in the various forms of communion ; 
the idea of divine protection in incarnations, medi- 
ators, etc. But the images made use of are not dry 
and colorless like words that by long use have lost 
all direct representative value and are merely marks 
or tags. Being symbolic, i. e., concrete, they are, as 
we have seen, direct substitutes for reality, and they 
differ as much from words as sketching and drawing 
differ from our alphabetical signs, which are, how- 
ever, their derivatives or abbreviations. 

It must, however, be noted that if "the mystic 
fact is a naive effort to apprehend the absolute, a 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 233 

mode of symbolic, not dialectic, thinking, that lives 
on symbols and finds in them the only fitting expres- 
sion,"^ it seems that this imaginative phase has been 
to some minds only an internal form, for they have 
attempted to go beyond it through ecstacy, aspiring 
to grasp the ultimate principle as a pure unity, with- 
out image and without form,^ which metaphysical 
realism hopes to attain by other methods and by a 
different route. However interesting they may be 
for psychology, these attempts, luring one on further 
and further, by their seeming or real elimination of 
every symbolic element, become foreign to our sub- 
ject, and we cannot consider them at greater length 
here. 

(3) "History shows that philosophy has done 
nothing but transform ideas of mystic production, 
substituting for the form of images and undemon- 
strated statements the form of assertions of a 
rational system."^ This declaration of a metaphysi- 
cian saves us from dwelling on the subject long. 

When we seek the difference between religious 
and metaphysical or philosophical symbolism, we 
find it in the nature of the constitutive elements. 
Turned in the direction of religion, mystic symbolism 
presupposes two principal elements — imagination 
and feeling; turned in a metaphysical direction, it 

^Eee6jae, op cit., pp. 139 ft. 

^ One at once calls to mind Plotinus, whose highest philosophy 
is a kind of indescribable ecstacy. (Tr.) 

' Hartmann, op. cit., vol. I, part 2, chapter IX. 



234 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

presupposes imagination and a very small rational 
element. This substitution involves appreciable devia- 
tion from the primitive type. The construction is 
of greater logical regularity. Besides, and this is 
the important characteristic, the subject-matter — 
though still resembling symbolic images — tends to 
become concepts: such are vivified abstractions, 
allegorical beings, hereditary entities of spirits and 
of gods. In short, metaphysical mysticism is a 
transition-form towards metaphysical rationalism, 
although these two tendencies have always been 
inimical in the history of philosophy, just as in the 
history of religion. 

In this imaginative plan of the world we may 
recognize stages according to the increasing weak- 
ness of the systems, depending on the number and 
quality of the hypotheses. For example, the pro- 
gression is apparent between Plotinus and the fren- 
zied creations of the Gnostics and the Cabalists. 
With the latter, we come into a world of unbridled 
fancy which, in place of human romances, invents 
cosmic romances. Here appear the allegorical 
beings mentioned above, half concept, half symbol; 
the ten Sephiros of the Cabala, immutable forms of 
being; the syzygies or couples of Gnosticism — soul 
and reflection, depth and silence, reason and life, 
inspiration and truth, etc. ; the absolute manifesting 
itself by the unfolding of fifty-two attributes, each 
unfolding comprising seven eons, corresponding to 
the 364 days of the year, etc. It would be weari- 
some to follow these extravagant thoughts, which, 



MYSTIC IMAGINATION. 235 

though the learned may treat them with some 
respect, have for the psychologist only the interest 
of pathologic evidence. Moreover, this form of 
mystic imagination presents too little that is new 
for us to speak of it without repeating ourselves. 

To conclude: The mystic imagination, in its 
alluring freedom, its variety, and its richness, is 
second to no form, not even to esthetic invention, 
which, according to common prejudice, is the type 
par excellence. Following the most venturesome 
methods of analogy, it has constructed conceptions 
of the world made up almost wholly of feelings and 
images — symbolic architectures. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION 

It is quite generally recognized that imagination 
is indispensable in all sciences; that without it we 
could only copy, repeat, imitate ; that it is a stimulus 
driving us onward and launching us into the un- 
known. If there does exist a very widespread preju- 
dice to the contrary — if many hold that scientific 
culture throttles imagination — we must look for the 
explanation of this view first, in the equivocation, 
pointed out several times, that makes the essence of 
the creative imagination consist of images, which 
are here most often replaced by abstractions or 
extracts of things — whence it results that the created 
work does not have the living forms of religion, of 
art, or even of mechanical invention; and then, in 
the rational requirements regulating the develop- 
ment of the creative faculty — it may not wander at 
will. In either case its end is determined, and in 
order to exist, i. e., in order to be accepted, the 
invention must become subject to preestablished 
rules. 

This variety of imagination being, after the 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 237 

esthetic form, the one that psychologists have best 
described, we may therefore be brief. A complete 
study of the subject, however, remains yet to be 
made. Indeed, we may remark that there is no 
"scientific imagination" in general, that its form 
must vary according to the nature of the science, 
and that, consequently, it really resolves itself into 
a certain number of genera and even of species. 
Whence arises the need of monographs, each one of 
which should be the work of a competent man. 

No one will question that mathematicians have a 
way of thinking all their own ; but even this is too 
general. The arithmetician, the algebraist, and 
more generally the analyst, in whom invention ob- 
tains in the most abstract form of discontinuous 
functions — symbols and their relations — cannot 
imagine like the geometrician. One may well speak 
of the ideal figures of geometry — the empirical 
origin of which is no longer anywhere contested — 
but we cannot escape from representing them as 
somehow in space. Does anyone think that Monge, 
the creator of descriptive geometry, who by his 
work has aided builders, architects, mechanics, stone 
cutters in their labors, could have the same type of 
imagination as the mathematician who has been 
given up all his life to the theory of number ? Here, 
then, are at least two well-marked varieties, to say 
nothing of mixed forms. The physicist's imagina- 
tion is necessarily more concrete; since he is inces- 
santly obliged to refer to the data of sense or to 
that totality of visual, tactile, motor, acoustic, 



238 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

thermic, etc., representations that we term the 
^'properties of matter." Our eye, says Tyndall, 
cannot see sound waves contract and dilate, but we 
construct them in thought — i. e., by means of 
visual images. The same remarks are true of chem- 
ists. The founders of the atomic theory certainly 
saw atoms, and pictured them in the mind's eye, and 
their arrangement in compound bodies. The com- 
plexity of the imagination increases still more in the 
geologist, the botanist, the zoologist; it approaches 
more and more, with its increasing details, to the 
level of perception. The physician, in whom science 
becomes also an art, has need of visual representa- 
tions of the exterior and interior, microscopic and 
macroscopic, of the various forms of diseased condi- 
tions; auditory representations (auscultation); tac- 
tile representations (touch, reverberation, etc.) ; and 
let us also add that we are not speaking merely of 
diagnosis of diseases, which is a matter of repro- 
ductive imagination, but of the discovery of a new 
pathologic "entity," proven and made certain from 
the symptoms. Lastly, if we do not hesitate to give 
a very broad extension to the term "scientific," and 
apply it also to invention in social matters, we shall 
see that the latter is still more exacting, for one must 
represent to oneself not only the elements of the 
past and of the present, but in addition construct a 
picture of the future according to probable induc- 
tions and deductions. 

It might be objected that the foregoing enumera- 
tion proves a great variety in the content of creative 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 239 

imagination but not in the imagination itself, and 
that nothing has proven that, under all these various 
aspects, there does not exist a so-called scientific 
imagination, that always remains identical. This 
position is untenable. For we have seen above^ that 
there exists no creative instinct in general, no one 
mere indeterminate "creative power," but only wants 
that, in certain cases, excite novel combinations of 
images. The nature of the separable materials, then, 
is a factor of the first importance ; it is determining, 
and indicates to the mind the direction in which it 
is turned, and all treason in this regard is paid for 
by aborted construction, by painful labor for some 
petty result. Invention, separated from what gives 
it body and soul, is nothing but a pure abstraction 

The monographs called for above would, then, be 
a not unneeded work. It is only from them col- 
lectively that the role of the imagination in the 
sciences could be completely shown, and we might 
by abstraction separate out the characters common 
to all varieties — the essential marks of this imagi- 
native type. 

Mathematics aside, all the sciences dealing with 
facts — from astronomy to sociology — suppose three 
moments, namely, observation, conjecture, verifica- 
tion. The first depends on external and internal 
sense, the second on the creative imagination, the 
third on rational operations, although the imagina- 
tion is not entirely barred from it. In order to 
study its influence on scientific development, we 
* See Part I, chapter II. 



240 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

shall study it (a) in the sciences in process of 
formation; (b) in the established sciences; (c) in 
the processes of verification. 

II 

It has often been said that the perfection of a 
science is measured by the amount of mathematics 
it requires; we might say, conversely, that its lack 
of completeness is measured by the amount of 
imagination that it includes. It is a psychological 
necessity. Where the human mind cannot explain 
or prove, there it invents; preferring a semblance 
of knowledge to its total absence.^ Imagination 
fulfills the function of a substitute; it furnishes a 
subjective, conjectural solution in place of an objec- 
tive, rational explanation. This substitution has 
degrees : 

( 1 ) The sway of the imagination is almost com- 
plete in the pseudo-sciences (alchemy, astrology, 
magic, occultism, etc.), which it would be more 
proper to call embryonic sciences, for they were the 
beginnings of more exact disciplines and their fan- 
cies have not been without use. In the history of 
science, this is the golden age of the creative imagi- 
nation, corresponding to the myth-making period 
already studied. 

(2) The semi-sciences, incompletely proved (cer- 

* Cf . the Preface to Kant 'a Critique of Pure Eeason. * ' Our 
reason ... is always troubled with questions which can- 
not be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of 
reason, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend 
the powers of human reason. (Tr.) 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 24I 

tain portions of biology, psychology, sociology, 
etc.), although they show a regression of imagina- 
tive explanation repulsed by the hitherto absent or 
insufficient experimentation, nevertheless abound in 
hypotheses, that succeed, contradict, destroy one 
another. It is a commonplace truism that does not 
need to be dwelt on — they furnish ad lihitiim 
examples of what has been rightly termed scientific 
mythology. 

Aside from the quantity of imagination expended, 
often without great profit, there is another character 
to be noted — the nature of the belief that accom- 
panies imaginative creation. We have already seen 
repeatedly that the intensity of the imaginary con- 
ception is in direct ratio to the accompanying belief, 
or rather, that the two phenomena are really one — 
merely the two aspects of one and the same state of 
consciousness. But faith — i. e., the adherence of 
the mind to an undemonstrated assertion — is here at 
its maximum. 

There are in the sciences hypotheses that are not 
believed in, that are preserved for their didactic 
usefulness, because they furnish a simple and con- 
venient method of explanation. Thus the "prop- 
erties of matter" (heat, electricity, magnetism, etc.), 
regarded by physicists as distinct qualities even in 
the first half of the last century; the "two electric 
fluids;" cohesion, affinity, etc., in chemistry — these 
are some of the convenient and admitted expressions 
to which, however, we attach no explanatory value. 

There is also to be mentioned the hypothesis held 



242 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

as an approximation of reality — this is the truly 
scientific position. It is accompanied by a pro- 
visional and ever-revocable belief. This is admitted, 
in principle at least, by all scientists, and has been 
put into practice by many of them. 

Lastly, there is the hypothesis regarded as the 
truth itself — one that is accompanied by a complete, 
absolute, belief. But daily observation and history 
show us that in the realm of embryonic and ill- 
proven sciences this disposition is more flourishing 
than anywhere else. The less proof there is, the 
more we believe. This attitude, however wrong 
from the standpoint of the logician, seems to the 
psychologist natural. The mind clings tenaciously 
to the hypothesis because the latter is its own crea- 
tion, or, because in adopting it, it seems to the mind 
that it should have itself discovered the hypothesis, 
so much does the latter harmonize with its inner 
states. Let us take the hypothesis of evolution, for 
example : we need not mention its high philosophical 
bearing, and the immense influence that it exerts on 
almost all forms of human thought. Nevertheless, 
it still remains an hypothesis ; but for many it is an 
indisputable and inviolable dogma, raised far above 
all controversy. They accept it with the uncompro- 
mising fervor of believers: a new proof of the 
underlying connection between imagination and 
belief — they increase and decrease pari passu, 

III 

Should we assign as belonging solely to the 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 243 

imagination every invention or discovery — in a 
word, whatever is new — in the well-organized 
sciences that form a body of solid, constantly- 
broadening doctrine ? It is a hard question. That 
which raises scientific knowledge above popular 
knowledge is the use of an experimental method and 
rigorous reasoning processes; but, is not induction 
and deduction going from the known to the un- 
known ? Without desiring to depreciate the method 
and its value, it must nevertheless be admitted that 
it is preventive, not inventive. It resembles, says 
Condillac, the parapets of a bridge, which do not 
help the traveler to walk, but keep him from falling 
over. It is of value especially as a habit of mind. 
People have wisely discoursed on the "methods'' of 
invention. There are none; but for which fact we 
could manufacture inventors just as we make 
mechanics and watchmakers. It is the imagination 
that invents, that provides the rational faculties with 
their materials, with the position, and even the solu- 
tion of their problems. Reasoning is only a means 
for control and proof ; it transforms the work of the 
imagination into acceptable, logical results. If one 
has not imagined beforehand, the logical method is 
aimless and useless, for we cannot reason concern- 
ing the completely unknown. Even when a problem 
seems to advance towards solution wholly through 
the reason, the imagination ceaselessly intervenes in 
the form of a succession of groupings, trials, 
guesses, and possibilities that it proposes. The 



244 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

function of method is to determine its value, to 
accept or reject it.^ 

Let us show by a few examples that conjecture, 
the work of the combining imagination, is at the 
root of the most diverse scientific inventions.^ 

Every mathematical invention is at first only an 
hypothesis that must be demonstrated, i. e., must 
be brought under previously established general 
principles : prior to the decisive moment of rational 
verification it is only a thing imagined. **In a 
conversation concerning the place of imagination in 
scientific work," says Liebig, "a great French 
mathematician expressed the opinion to me that the 
greater part of mathematical truth is acquired not 
through deduction, but through the imagination. 
He might have said 'all the mathematical truths,* 
without being wrong." We know that Pascal dis- 
covered the thirty-second proposition of Euclid all 
by himself. It is true that it has been concluded, 

* In the rare Notes that he has left, James Watt writes that 
one afternoon he had gone out for a stroll on the Green at 
Glasgow, and his thoughts were absorbed with the experiments 
in which he was busied, trying to prevent the cooling of the 
cylinder. The thought then came to him that steam, being an 
elastic fluid, should expand and be precipitated in a space for- 
merly void; and having made a vacuum in a separate vessel 
and opened communication between the steam of the cylinder 
and the vacant space, we see what should follow. Thus, having 
imagined the masterpiece of his discovery, he enumerates the 
processes that, employed in turn, allowed him to perfect it. 

^ For further information we refer to the Logique de I 'hypo- 
tMse, by E. Naville, from which are borrowed most of the 
facts here given. 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 245 

wrongly perhaps, that he had also discovered all 
the earlier ones, the order followed by the Greek 
geometrician not being necessary, and not excluding 
other arrangements. However it be, reasoning alone 
was not enough for that discovery. "Many people," 
says Naville, "of whom I am one, might have 
thought hard all their lives without finding out the 
thirty-two propositions of Euclid." This fact alone 
shows clearly the difference between invention and 
demonstration, imagination and reason. 

In the sciences dealing with facts, all the best- 
established experimental truths have passed through 
a conjectural stage. History permits no doubt on 
this point. What makes it appear otherwise is the 
fact that for centuries there has gradually come to 
be formed a body of solid belief, making a whole, 
stored away in classic treatises from which we learn 
from childhood, and in which they seem to be ar- 
ranged of themselves. We are not told of the series 
of checks and failures through which^ they have 
passed. Innumerable are the inventions that re- 
mained for a long time in a state of conjecture, 
matters of pure imagination, because various cir- 
cumstances did not permit them to take shape, to 
be demonstrated and verified. Thus, in the thir- 
teenth century, Roger Bacon had a very clear idea 

^ This much-criticised defect has been only partially over- 
come in our methods of education through ** object" lessons, 
and, if we may call them so, evolutionary methods, showing to 
the child "wie es eigentUch gewesen. " Cf. J. Dewey, **The 
School and Society." (Tr.) 



246 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

of a construction on rails similar to our railroads; 
of optical instruments that would permit, as does 
the telescope, to see very far, and to discover the 
invisible. It is even claimed that he must have 
foreseen the phenomena of interferences, the demon- 
stration of which had to be awaited ten centuries. 

On the other hand, there are giiesses that have 
met success without much delay, but in which the 
imaginative phase — that of the invention preceding 
all demonstration — is easy to locate. We know that 
Tycho-Brahe, lacking inventive genius but rich in 
capacity for exact observation, met Kepler, an 
adventurous spirit : together, the two made a com- 
plete scientist. We have seen how Kepler, guided 
by a preconceived notion of the ^'harmony of the 
spheres," after many trials and corrections, ended 
by discovering his laws. Copernicus recognized 
expressly that his theory was suggested to him by 
an hypothesis of Pythagoras — that of a revolution 
of the earth about a central fire, assumed to be in 
a fixed position. Newton imagined his hypothesis 
of gravitation from the year 1666 on, then aban- 
doned it, the result of his calculations disagreeing 
with observation ; finally he took it up again after a 
lapse of a few years, having obtained from Paris 
the new measure of the terrestrial meridian that 
permitted him to prove his guess. In relating his 
discoveries, Lavoisier is lavish in expressions that 
leave no doubt as to their originally conjectural 
character. "He suspects that the air of the atmos- 
phere is not a simple thing, but is composed of two 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 247 

very different substances." He presumes that the 
permanent alkaUes (potash, soda) and the earths 
(Hme, magnesia) should not be considered simple 
substances." And he adds : ''What I present here 
is at the most no more than a mere conjecture." 
We have mentioned above the case of Darwin. Be- 
sides, the history of scientific discoveries is full of 
facts of this sort. 

The passage from the imaginative to the rational 
phase may be slow or sudden. "For eight months," 
says Kepler, "1 have seen a first glimmer; for three 
months, daylight; for the last week I see the sun- 
light of the most wonderful contemplation." On 
the other hand, Haiiy drops a bit of crystallized cal- 
cium spar, and, looking at one of the broken prisms, 
cries out, "All is found!" and immediately verifies 
his quick intuition in regard to the true nature of 
crystallization. We have already indicated^ the psy- 
chological reasons for these differences. 

Underneath all the reasoning, inductions, deduc- 
tions, calculations, demonstrations, methods, and 
logical apparatus of every sort, there is something 
animating them that is not understood, that is the 
work of that complex operation — the constructive 
imagination. 

To conclude : The hypothesis is a creation of the 
mind, invested with a provisional reality that may, 
after verification, become permanent. False hy- 
potheses are characterized as imaginary, by which 
designation is meant that they have not become freed 

* See above, Part Two, chapter IV. 



248 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

from the first state. But for psychology they are 
different neither in their origin nor in their nature 
from those scientific hypotheses that, subjected to 
the power of reason or of experiment, have come out 
victorious. Besides, in addition to abortive 
hypotheses, there are dethroned ones. What theory 
was more cHnging, more fascinating in its applica- 
tions, than that of phlogiston? Kant^ praised it as 
one of the greatest discoveries of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The development of the sciences is replete 
with these downfalls. They are psychological re- 
gressions: the invention, considered for a time as 
adequate to reality, decays, returns to the imagin- 
ative phase whence it seems to have emerged, and 
remains pure imagination. 



IV 



Imagination is not absent from the third stage of 
scientific research, in demonstration and experimen- 
tation, but here we must be brief, (i) because it 
passes to a minor place, yielding its rank to other 
modes of investigation, and (2) because this study 
would have to become doubly employed with the 
practical and mechanical imagination, which will 
occupy our attention later. The imagination is here 
only an auxiliary, a useful instrument, serving : 

(i) In the sciences of reasoning, to discover in- 
genious methods of demonstration, stratagems for 
avoiding or overcoming difficulties. 

^Preface to the Critique of Pure Eeason, 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 249 

(2) In the experimental sciences for inventing 
methods of research or of control — ^whence its anal- 
ogy, above mentioned, to the practical imagination. 
Furthermore, the reciprocal influence of these two 
forms of imagination is a matter of common ob- 
servation: a scientific discovery permits the inven- 
tion of new instruments; the invention of new in- 
struments makes possible experiments that are in- 
creasingly more complicated and delicate. 

One remark further : This constructive imagina- 
tion at the third stage is the only one met with in 
many scientists. They lack genius for invention, 
but discover details, additions, corrections, improve- 
ments. A recent author distinguishes (a) those 
who have created the hypothesis, prepared the ex- 
periments, and imagined the appropriate apparatus; 

(b) those who have imagined the hypothesis and the 
experiment, but use means already invented; and 

(c) those who, having found the hypothesis made 
and demonstrated, have thought out a new method 
of verification.^ The scientific imagination becomes 
poorer as we follow it down this scale, which, how- 
ever, bears no relation to exactness of reasoning and 
firmness of method. 

Neglecting species and varieties, we may reduce 
the fundamental characters of the scientific imagina- 
tion to the following: 

*Colozza, L'immaginazione nella Scienza (Paravia, 1900), 
pp. 89 ff. In this author will be found abundant details re- 
specting famous discoveries or experiments — those of Galileo, 
Franklin, Grimaldi, etc. 



250 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

For its material, it has concepts, the degree of 
abstraction of which varies with the nature of the 
science. 

It employs only those associational forms that 
have an objective basis, although its mission is to 
form new combinations, ''the discoveries consisting 
of the relation of ideas, capable of being united, 
which hitherto have been isolated/'^ (Laplace.) 
All association with an affective basis is strictly ex- 
cluded. 

It aims toward objectivity: in its conjectural con- 
struction it attempts to reproduce the order and con- 
nection of things. Whence its natural affinity for 
realistic art, which is midway between fiction and 
reality. 

It is unifying, and so just the opposite of the 
esthetic imagination, which is rather developmental. 
It puts forward the master idea (Claude Bernard's 
idee directrice), a center of attraction and impulse 
that enlivens the entire work. The principle of 
unity, without which no creation succeeds, is no- 
where more visible than in the scientific imagination. 

"Here is an example in confirmation, taken from Duclaux's 
book on Pasteur: Herschel established a relation between the 
crystalline structure of quartz and the rotatory power of the 
substance; later on, Biot established it for sugar, tartaric 
acid, etc. — i. e., for substances in solution, whence he concluded 
that the rotatory power is due to the form of the molecule 
itself, not to the arrangement of the molecules in relation to 
one another. Pasteur discovered a relation between molecular 
dyssymetry and hemiedry, and the study of hemiedry in crystals 
led him logically to that of fermentation and spontaneous gen- 
eration. 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 25 1 

Even when illusory, it is useful. Pasteur, scrupu- 
lous scientist that he was, did not hesitate to say : 
"The experimenter's illusions are a part of his 
power: they are the preconceived ideas serving as 
guides for him/* 



It does not seem to me wrong to regard the 
imagination of the metaphysician as a variety of 
the scientific imagination. Both arise from one and 
the same requirement. Several times before this 
we have emphasized this point — that the various 
forms of imagination are not the work of an alleged 
"creative instinct," but that each particular one has 
arisen from a special need. The scientific imagina- 
tion has for its prime motive the need of partial 
knowledge or explanation ; the metaphysical imagin- 
ation has for its prime motive the need of a total 
or complete explanation. The latter is no longer an 
endeavor on a restricted group of phenomena, but 
a conjecture as to the totality of things, as aspira- 
tion toward completely unified knowledge, a need 
of final explanation that, for certain minds, is just 
as imperious as any other need. 

This necessity is expressed by the creation of a 
cosmic or human hypothesis constructed after the 
type and methods of scientific hypotheses, but rad- 
ically subjective in its origin — only apparently ob- 
jective. It is a rationalised myth. 

The three moments requisite for the constitution 
of a science are found here, but in a modified form : 



252 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

reflection replaces observation, the choice of the 
hypothesis becomes all-important, and its application 
to everything corresponds to scientific proof. 

( 1 ) The first moment or preparatory stage, does 
not belong to our subject. It requires, however, a 
word in passing. In all science, whether well or ill 
established, firm or weak, we start from facts de- 
rived from observation or experiment. Here, facts 
are replaced by general ideas. The terminus of 
every science is, then, the starting-point of philo- 
sophical speculation : — metaphysics begins where 
each separate science ends ; and the limits of the lat- 
ter are theories, hypotheses. These hypotheses be- 
come working material for metaphysics which, con- 
sequently, is an hypothesis built on hypotheses, a 
conjecture grafted on conjecture, a work of imagin- 
ation superimposed on works of imagination. Its 
principal source, then, is imagination, to which re- 
flection applies itself. 

Metaphysicians, indeed, hold that the object of 
their researches, far from being symbolic and ab- 
stract, as in science, or fictitious and imaginary, 
as in art, is the very essence of things, — absolute 
reality. Unfortunately, they have never proven that 
it suffices to seek in order to find, and to wish in 
order to get. 

(2) The second stage is critical. It is concerned 
with finding the principle that rules and explains 
everything. In the invention of his theory the meta- 
physician gives his measure, and permits us to value 
his imaginative power. But the hypothesis, which 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 253 

in science is always provisional and revocable, is 
here the supreme reality, the fixed position, the in- 
concussum quid. 

The choice of the principle depends on several 
causes: The chief of these is the creator's indi- 
viduality. Every metaphysician has a point of view, 
a personal way of contemplating and interpreting the 
totality of things, a belief that tends to recruit ad- 
herents. 

Secondary causes are : the influence of earlier sys- 
tems, the sum of acquired knowledge, the social 
milieu, the variable predominance of religions, 
sciences, morality, esthetic culture. 

Without troubling ourselves with classifications, 
otherwise very numerous, into which we may group 
systems (idealism, materialism, monism, etc.) we 
shall, for our purpose, divide metaphysicians into 
the imaginative and rational, according as the 
imagination is superior to the reason or the reason 
rules the imagination. The differences between 
these two types of mind, already clearly shown in the 
choice of the hypothesis, are proven in its develop- 
ment. 

(3) The fundamental principle, indeed, must 
come out of its state of involution and justify its 
universal validity by explaining everything. This 
is the third moment, when the scientific process of 
verification is replaced by a process of construction. 

All imaginative metaphysics have a dynamic basis, 
e. g., the Platonic Ideas, Leibniz' Monadology, the 
Nature-philosophy of Schelling, Schopenhauer's 



254 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Will, and Hartmann's Unconscious, the mystics, the 
systems that assume a world-soul, etc. Semi-ab- 
stract, semi-poetic constructions, they are permeated 
with imagination not only in the general conception, 
but also in the numberless details of its application. 
Such are the "fulgurations*' of Leibniz, those very 
rich digressions of Schopenhauer, etc. They have 
the fascination of a work of art as much as that of 
science, and this is no longer questioned by meta- 
physicians themselves;^ they are living things. 

Rational metaphysics, on the other hand, have a 
chilly aspect, which brings them nearer the abstract 
sciences. Such are most of the mechanical con- 
ceptions, the Hegelian Dialectic, Spinoza's construc- 
tion more geometrico, the Summa of the Middle 
Ages. These are buildings of concepts solidly ce- 
mented together with logical relations. But art is 
not wholly absent ; it is seen in the systematic con- 
catenation, in the beautiful ordering, in the sym- 
metry of division, in the skill with which the gen- 
erative principle is constantly brought in, in showing 
it ever-present, explaining everything. It has been 
possible to compare these systems with the archi- 
tecture of the Gothic cathedrals, in which the domi- 
nant idea is incessantly repeated in the numberless 
details of the construction, and in the branching 
multiplicity of ornamentation. 

Further, whatever view we adopt as to its ulti- 
mate value, it must be recognized that the imagina- 

*0n this point cf. Fouillee, L'Avenir de la Metaphysique, 
pp. 79 ff. 



SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION. 255 

tion of the great metaphysicians, by the originality 
and fearlessness of its conceptions, by its skill in 
perfecting all parts of its work, is inferior to no 
other form. It is equal to the highest, if it does not 
indeed surpass them. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PRACTICAL AND MECHANICAL 
IMAGINATION 

The study of the practical imagination is not 
without difficulties. First of all, it has not hitherto 
attracted psychologists, so that we enter the field 
at random, and wander unguided in an unexplored 
region. But the principal obstacle is in the lack of 
determination of this form of imagination, and in 
the absence of boundary lines. Where does it be- 
gin, and where does it end? Penetrating all our 
life even in its least details, it is likely to lead us. 
astray through the diversity, often insignificant, of 
its manifestations. To convince ourselves of this 
fact, let us take a man regarded as least imagin- 
ative: — subtract the moments when his con- 
sciousness is busied with perceptions, memories, 
emotions, logical thought and action — all the rest 
of his mental life must be put down to the credit, 
of the imagination. Even thus limited, this func- 
tion is not a negligible quantity: — it includes the 
plans and constructions for the future, and all the 
dreams of escaping from the present; and there is 
no man but makes such. This had' to be mentioned 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 257 

on account of its very triteness, because it is often 
forgotten, and consequently the field of the creative 
imagination is unduly restricted, being limited little 
by little to exceptional cases. 

It must, however, be recognized that these small 
facts teach us little. Consequently, following our 
adopted procedure, dwelling longest on the clearer 
and more evident cases in which the work of cre- 
ating appears distinctly, we shall rapidly pass over 
the lower forms of the practical imagination, in or- 
der to dwell on the higher form — technical or me- 
chanical imagination. 



If we take an ordinary imaginative person, — un- 
derstanding by this expression, one whom his nature 
singles out for no special invention — we see that 
he excels in the small inventions, adapted for a 
moment, for a detail, for the petty needs constantly 
arising in human life. It is a fruitful, ingenious, in- 
dustrious mind, one that knows how to "take hold 
of things." The active, enterprising American, cap- 
able of passing from one occupation to another ac- 
cording to circumstances, opportunity, or imagined 
profits, furnishes a good example. 

If we descend from this form of sane imagina- 
tion toward the morbid forms, we meet first the 
unstable — knights of industry, hunters of adven- 
ture, inventors frequently of questionable means, 
people hungry for change, always imagining what 
they haven't, trying in turn all professions, becom- 



/ 



258 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

ing workmen, soldiers, sailors, merchants, etc., not 
from expediency, but from natural instability. 

Further down are found the acknowledged 
"freaks" at the brink of insanity, who are but the 
extreme form of the unstable, and who, after hav- 
ing wasted haphazard much useless imagination, end 
in an insane asylum or worse still. 

Let us consider these three groups together. Let 
us eliminate the intellectual and moral qualities 
characteristic of each group, which establish notable 
differences between them, and let us consider only 
their inventive capacity as applied to practical life. 
One character common to all is mobility — the ten- 
dency to change. It is a matter of current observa- 
tion that men of lively imagination are changeable. 
Common opinion, which is also the opinion of moral- 
ists and of most psychologists, attributes this mo- 
bility, this instability, to the imagination. This, in 
my opinion, is just upside down. It is not because 
they have an active imagination that they are 
changeable, but it is because they are changeable that 
their imagination is active. We thus return to the 
motor basis of all creative work. Each new or 
merely modified disposition becomes a center of at- 
traction and pull. Doubtless the inner push is a 
necessary condition, but it is not sufificient. If 
there w^ere not within them a suf^cient number of 
concrete, abstract, or semi-abstract representations, 
susceptible of various combinations, nothing would 
happen; but the origin of invention and of its fre- 
quent or constant changes of direction lies in the 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 259 

emotional and motor constitution, not in the quan- 
tity or quality of representations. I shall not dwell 
longer on a subject already treated/ but it was 
proper to show, in passing, that common opinion 
starts from an erroneous conception of the primary 
conditions of invention — whether great or small, 
speculative or practical. 

In the immense empire of the practical imagina- 
tion, superstitious beliefs form a goodly province. 

What is superstition? By what positive signs 
do we recognize it ? An exact definition and a sure 
criterion are impossible. It is a flitting notion that 
depends on the times, places, and nature of minds. 
Has it not often been said that the religion of one 
is superstition to another, and vice versa? This, 
too, is only a single instance from among many 
others ; for the common opinion that restricts super- 
stition within the bounds of religious faith is an in- 
complete view. There are peculiar beliefs, foreign 
to every dogma and every religious feeling, from 
which the most radical freethinker is not exempt; 
for example, the superstitions of gamblers. Indeed, 
at the bottom of all such beliefs, w^e always find the 
vague, semi-conscious notion of a mysterious power 
— destiny, fate, chance. 

Without taking the trouble to set arbitrary limits, 
let us take the facts as they are, without possible 
question, i. e., imaginary creations, subjective fan- 
cies, having reality only for those admitting them. 
Even a summary collection of past and present su- 
^ See above. Part One, chapter II. 



26o THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

perstitions would fill a library. Aside from those 
having a frankly religious mark, others almost as 
numerous surround civil life, birth, marriage, death, 
appearance and healing of diseases, dies fasti atque 
ncfasti, propitious or fateful words, auguries drawn 
from the meeting or acts of certain animals. The 
list would be endless.^ 

All that can be attempted here is a determina- 
tion of the principal condition of that state of mind, 
the psychology of which is in the last analysis very 
simple. We shall thus answer in an indirect and 
incomplete manner the question of criterion. 

First, since we hold that the origin of all imagin- 
ative creation is a need, a desire, a tendency, where 
then is the origin of that inexhaustible fount of 
fancies? In the instinct for individual preserva- 
tion, orientated in the direction of the future. Man 
seeks to divine future events, and by various means 
to act on the order of things to modify it for his 
own advantage or to appease his evil fate. 

As for the mental mechanism that, set in motion 
by this desire, produces the vain images of the 
superstitious, it implies : 

(i) A deep idea of causality, reduced to a post 
hoc, ergo propter hoc. Herodotus says of the Egyp- 
tian priests: **They have discovered more prodigies 
and presages than any other people, because, when 
some extraordinary thing appears, they note it as 

^ For a complete and recent study of the question, see A. Leh- 
mann, Aberglaube und Zauberei von den dltesten Zeiten Ms in 
die Gegenwartf 1898. 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 261 

well as all the events following it, so that if a simi- 
lar prodigy appears anew, they expect to see the 
same events reproduced." It is the hypothesis of an 
indissoluble association between two or more events, 
assumed without verification, without criticism. This 
manner of thinking depends on the weakness of the 
logical faculties or on the excessive influence of the 
feelings. 

(2) The abuse of reasoning by analogy. This 
great artisan of the imagination is satisfied with 
likenesses so vague and agreements so strange, that 
it dares everything. Resemblance is no longer a 
quality of things imposed on the m.ind, but an hy- 
pothesis of the mind imposed on things. Astrology 
groups into "constellations" stars that are billions of 
miles apart, believes that it discovers there an ani- 
mal shape, human or any other, and deduces there- 
from alleged "influences." This star is reddish 
(Mars), sign of blood; this other is of a pure, bril- 
liant silvery light (Venus) or livid (Saturn), and 
acts in a different way. We know what clever 
structures of conjectures and prognoses have been 
built on these foundations. Need we mention the 
Middle Age practice of charms, which even in our 
day still has adherents among cultured people? 
The physicians of the time of Charles II, says Lang, 
gave their patients "mummy powder" (pulverized 
mummies) because the mummies, having lasted a 
long time, must prolong life.^ Gold in solution has 

^ Lang, (yp cii., I, 96. There will be found many other facts 
of this kind. 



262 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

been esteemed as a medicine — gold, being a per- 
fect substance, should produce perfect health. In 
order to get rid of a disease nothing is more fre- 
quent among primitive men than to picture the sick 
person on wood or on the ground, and to strike 
the injured part with an arrow or knife, in order 
to annihilate the sickening principle. 

(3) Finally, there is the magic influence ascribed 
to certain words. It is the triumph of the theory 
of nomina munina; we need not return to it. But 
the working of the mind on words, erecting them 
into entities, conferring life and power on them— 
in a word, the activity that creates myths and is 
the final basis of all constructive imagination — ap- 
pears also here.^ 

II 

Up to this point we have considered the practical 
imagination only in its somewhat petty aspect in 
small inventions or as semi-morbid in superstitious 

' If this book were not merely an essay, we should have had 
to study language as an instrument of the practical life in its 
relations to the creative imagination, especially the function of 
analogy, in the extension and transformation of the meanings 
of words. Works on linguistics are full of evidence on this 
point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the 
vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. 
' ' Slang, ' ' says one philologist, ' ' has the property of figuring, 
expressing, and picturing language. . . . With it, however 
low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." 
Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It 
lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing 
words, but with a very marked preference for the worse or 
degrading meanings. 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 263 

fancies. We now come to its higher form, mechan- 
ical invention. 

This subject has not been studied by psychologists. 
Not that they have misunderstood its role, which 
is, after all, very evident; but they limit themselves 
to speak of it cursorily, without emphasizing it. 

In order to appreciate its importance, I see no 
other way than to put ourselves face to face with 
the works that it has produced, to question the his- 
tory of discovery and useful arts, to profit by the 
disclosures of inventors and their biographers. 

Of a work of this kind, which would be very long 
because the materials are scattered, we can give here 
only a rough sketch, merely to take therefrom what 
is of interest for psychology and what teaches us 
in regard to the characters peculiar to this type of 
imagination. 

The erroneous view that opposes imagination to 
the useful, and claims that they are mutually ex- 
clusive, is so widespread and so persistent, that we 
shall seem to many to be expressing a paradox when 
we say that if we could strike the balance of the 
imagination that man has spent and made perma- 
nent in esthetic life on the one hand, and in tech- 
nical and mechanical invention on the other, the 
balance would be in favor of the latter. This asser- 
tion, however, will not seem paradoxical to those 
who have considered the question. Why, then, the 
view above mentioned? Why are people inclined 
to believe that our present subject, if not entirely 
foreign to the imagination, is only an impoverished 



264 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

form of it? I account for it by the following rea- 
sons: 

Esthetic imagination, when fully complete, is 
simply fixed, i. e., remains a fictitious matter recog- 
nized as such. It has a frankly subjective, personal 
character, arbitrary in its choice of means. A work 
of art — a poem, a novel, a drama, an opera, a pic- 
ture, a statue — might have been otherwise than it 
is. It is possible to modify the general plan, to 
add or reduce an episode, to change an ending. 
The novelist who in the course of his work changes 
his characters; the dramatic author who, in defer- 
ence to public sentiment, substitutes a happy de- 
nouement in place of a catastrophe, furnish naive 
testimony of this freedom of imagination. More- 
over, artistic creation, expressing itself in words, 
sounds, lines, forms, colors, is cast in a mould that 
allows it only a feeble "material" reality. 

The mechanical imagination is objective — it must 
be embodied, take on a form that gives it a place 
side by side with products of nature. It is arbitrary 
neither in its choice nor in its means ; it is not a free 
creature having its end in itself. In order to suc- 
ceed, it is subjected to rigorous physical conditions, 
to a determinism. It is at this cost that it becomes 
a reality, and as we instinctively establish an an- 
tithesis between the imaginary and the real, it seems 
that mechanical invention is outside the realm of the 
imagination. Moreover, it requires the constant 
intervention of calculation, of reasoning, and lastly, 
of a manual operation of supreme importance. We 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 265 

may say without exaggerating that the success of 
many mechanical creations depends on the skillful 
manipulation of materials. But this last moment, 
because it is decisive, should not make us forget its 
antecedents, especially the initial moment, which is, 
for psychology, similar to all other instances of in- 
vention, when the idea arises, tending to become 
objective. 

Otherwise, the differences here pointed out be- 
tween the two forms of imagination — esthetic and 
mechanical — are but relative. The former is not 
independent of technical apprenticeship, often of 
long duration (e. g., in music, sculpture, painting). 
As for the latter, we should not exaggerate its de- 
terminism. Often the same end can be reached by 
different inventions — ^by means differently imagined, 
through different mental constructions; and it fol- 
lows that, after all allowances are made, these dif- 
ferently realized imaginations are equally useful. 

The difference between the two types is found in 
the nature of the need or desire stimulating the in- 
vention, and secondly in the nature of the materials 
employed. Others have confounded two distinct 
things — liberty of imagination, which belongs rather 
to esthetic creation, and quality and power of imag- 
ination, which may be identical in both cases. 

I have questioned certain inventors very skillful in 
mechanics, addressing myself to those, preferably, 
whom I knew to be strangers to any preconceived 
psychological theory. Their replies agree, and 
prove that the birth and development of mechanical 



266 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

invention are very strictly like those found in other 
forms of constructive imagination. As an example, 
I cite the folloAving statement of an engineer, which 
I render literally: 

*'The so-called creative imagination surely pro- 
ceeds in very different ways, according to tempera- 
ment, aptitudes, and, in the same individual, follow- 
ing the mental disposition, the milieu. 

"We may, however, as far as regards mechanical 
inventions, distinguish four sufficiently clear phases 
— the germ, incubation, flowering, and completion. 

"By germ I mean the first idea coming to the 
mind to furnish a solution for a problem that the 
whole of one's observations, studies, and researches 
has put before one, or that, put by another, has 
struck one. 

"Then comes incubation, often very long and 
painful, or, again, even unconscious. Instinctively 
as well as voluntarily one brings to the solution of 
the problem all the materials that the eyes and ears 
can gather. 

"When this latent work is sufficiently complete, 
the idea suddenly bursts forth, it may be at the end 
of a voluntary tension of mind, or on the occasion of 
a chance remark, tearing the veil that hides the sur- 
mised image. 

"But this image always appears simple and clear. 
In order to get the ideal solution into practice, there 
is required a struggle against matter, and the bring- 
ing to an issue is the most thankless part of the in- 
ventor's work. 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 267 

"In order to give consistence and body to the idea 
caught sight of enthusiastically in an aureole, one 
must have patience, a perseverance through all trials. 
One must view on all sides the mechanical agencies 
that should serve to set the image together, until the 
latter has attained the simplicity that alone makes 
invention viable. In this work of bringing to a 
head, the same spirit of invention and imagination 
must be constantly drawn upon for the solution of 
all the details, and it is against this arduous require- 
ment that the great majority of inventors rebel again 
and again. 

"This is then, I believe, how one may in a general 
way understand the genesis of an invention. It fol- 
lows from this that here, as almost everywhere, the 
imagination acts through association of ideas. 

"Thanks to a profound acquaintance with known 
mechanical methods, the inventor succeeds, through 
association of ideas, in getting novel combinations 
producing new effects, towards the realization of 
which his mind has in advance been bent.'' 

But for a slightly explored subject, the foregoing 
remarks are not enough. It is necessary to de- 
termine more precisely the general and special char- 
acters of this form of imagination. 

I. General Characters 

I term general characters those that the mechan- 
ical imagination possesses in common with the best 
known, least questioned forms of the constructive 
imagination. In order to be convinced that, so far 



268 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

as concerns these characters it does not differ from 
the rest, let us take, for the sake of comparison, 
esthetic imagination, since it is agreed, rightly or 
wrongly, that this is the model par excellence. We 
shall see that the essential psychological conditions 
coincide in the two instances. 

The mechanical imagination thus has like the oth- 
er its ideal, i. e., a perfection conceived and put 
forward as capable, little by little, of being realized. 
The idea is at first hidden; it is, to use our corre- 
spondent's phrase, "the germ," the principle of unity, 
center of attraction, that suggests, excites, and 
groups appropriate associations of images, in which 
it is enwrapped and organized into a structure, an 
ensemble of means converging toward a common 
end. It thus presupposes a dissociation of expe- 
rience. The inventor undoes, decomposes, breaks 
up in thought, or makes of experience a tool, an 
instrument, a machine, an agency for building anew 
with the debris. 

The practical imagination is no more foreign to 
inspiration than the esthetic imagination. The his- 
tory of useful inventions is full of men who suf- 
fered privations, persecution, ruin; who fought to 
the bitter end against relatives and friends — drawn 
by the need of creating, fascinated not by the hope 
of future gain but by the idea of an imposed mis- 
sion, of a destiny they had to fulfill. What more 
have poets and artists done? The fixed and irre- 
sistible idea has led more than one to a foreseen 
death, as in the discovery of explosives, the first 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 269 

attempts at lightning conductors, aeronautics, and 
many others. Thus, from a true intuition, primi- 
tive civilizations have put on a level great poets 
and great inventors, erected into divinities or demi- 
gods historical or legendary personages in whom the 
genius of discovery is personified : — among the Hin- 
doos, Vicavakarma; among the Greeks, Hephaestos, 
Prometheus, Triptolemus, Daedalus and Icarus. The 
Chinese, despite their dry imagination, have done 
the same ; and we find the same condition in Eg>^pt, 
Assyria, and everywhere. Moreover, the practical 
and mechanical arts have passed through a first 
period of no-change, during which the artisan, sub- 
jected to fixed rules and an undisputed tradition, 
considers himself an instrument of divine revela- 
tion.^ Little by little he has emerged from that 
theological age, to enter the humanistic age, when, 
being fully conscious of being the author of his 
work, he labors freely, changes and modifies accord- 
ing to his own inspiration. 

Mechanical and industrial imagination, like es- 
thetic imagination, has its preparatory period, its 
zenith and decline : the periods of the precursors, of 
the great inventors, and of mere perfectors. At 
first a venture is made, effort is wasted with small 
result, — the man has come too early or lacks clear 
vision; then a great imaginative mind arises, blos- 
soms; after him the work passes into the hands of 
dii minores, pupils or imitators, who add, abridge, 

* Ample information on this point will be found in the work 
of Espinas, Les Origines de la Technologie. 



270 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

modify: such is the order. The many-times writ- 
ten history of the appHcation of steam, from the 
time of the eohpile of Hero of Alexandria to the 
heroic period of Newcomen and Watt, and the im- 
provements made since their time, is one proof of 
the statement. Another example : — the machine for 
measuring duration is at first a simple clepsydra; 
then there are added marks indicating the subdivi- 
sions of time, then a water gauge causes a hand to 
move around a dial, then two hands for the hours 
and minutes; then comes a great moment — by the 
use of weights the clepsydra becomes a clock, at 
first massive and cumbersome, later lightened, be- 
coming capable, with Tycho-Brahe, of marking sec- 
onds ; and then another moment — Huyghens invents 
the spiral spring to replace the weights, and the 
clock, simplified and lightened, becomes the watch. 

2. Special Characters 

The special characteristics of the mechanical 
imagination being the marks belonging to this type, 
we shall study them at greater length. 

(I) There is first of all, at least in great in- 
ventors, an inborn quality, — that is, a natural dis- 
position, — that does not originate in experience and 
owes the latter only its development. This quality 
is a bent in a practical, useful direction; a tendency 
to act, not in the realm of dreams or human feeling, 
not on individuals or social groups, not toward the 
attainment of theoretical knowledge of nature, but 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 2.^1 

to become master over natural forces, to transform 
them and adapt them toward an end. 

Every mechanical invention arises from a need : 
from the strict necessity for individual preservation 
in the case of primitive man who wages war against 
the powers of nature ; from the desire for well-being 
and the necessity for luxury in growing civilization ; 
from the need of creating little engines, imitating 
instruments and machines, in the child. In a word, 
every particular invention, great or small, arises 
from a particular need; for, we repeat again, there 
is no creative instinct in general. A man distin- 
guished for various inventions along practical lines, 
writes : "As far as my memory allows, I can state 
that in my case conception always results from a 
material or mental need.^ It springs up suddenly. 
Thus, in 1887, a speech of Bismarck made me so 
angry that I immediately thought of arming my 

^ The same correspondent, without my having asked him in 
regard to this, gives me the following details: ''When about 
seven years old I saw a locomotive, its fire and smoke. My 
father 's stove also made fire and smoke, but lacked wheels. If, 
then, I told my father, we put wheels under the stove, it would 
move like a locomotive. Later, when about thirteen, the sight of 
a steam threshing-machine suggested to me the idea of making 
a horseless wagon. I began a childish construction of one, 
which my father made me give up, ' ' etc. The tendency toward 
mechanical invention shows itself very early in some children — 
we gave examples of it before. Our inventor adds: ''My 
imagination was strongest at about the age of 25 to 35 (I am 
now 45 years old). After that time it seems to me that the 
remainder of life is good only for producing less important 
conceptions, forming a natural consequence of the principal con- 
ceptions born of the period of youth." 



272 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

country with a repeating rifle. I had already made 
various applications to the ministry of war, when 
I learned that the Lebel system had just been 
adopted. My patriotism was fully satisfied, but I 
still have the design of the gun that I invented." 
This communication mentions two or three other in- 
ventions that arose under analogous circumstances, 
but have had a chance of being adopted. 

Among the requisite qualities I mention the nat- 
ural and necessary preeminence of certain groups of 
sensations or images (visual, tactile, motor) that 
may be decisive in determining the direction of the 
inventor. 

(II) Mechanical invention grows by successive 
stratifications and additions, as in the sciences, but 
more completely. It is a fine verification of the 
"subsidiary law of growing complexity" previously 
discussed.^ If we measure the distance traversed 
since the distant ages when man was naked and 
unarmed before nature to the present time of the 
reign of machinery, we are astonished at the amount 
of imagination produced and expended, often use- 
lessly lavished, and we ask ourselves how such a 
work could have been misunderstood or so lightly 
appreciated. It does not pertain to our subject to 
make even a summary table of this long develop- 
ment. The reader can consult the special works 
which, unfortunately, are most often fragmentary 
and lack a general view. So we should feel grateful 
to a historian of the useful arts, L. Bourdeau, for 

* See above, Part Two, chapter V. 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 273 

having attempted to separate out the philosophy of 
the subject, and for having fastened it down in the 
following formulas :^ 

(a) The exploitation of the powers of nature is 
made according to their degree of power. 

(b) The extension of working instruments has 
followed a logical evolution in the direction of grow- 
ing complexity and perfection. 

Man, according to the observations of M. Bour- 
deau, has applied his creative activity to natural 
forces and has set them to work according to a regu- 
lar order, viz. : 

(i) Human forces, the only ones available dur- 
ing the "state of nature" and the savage state. Be- 
fore all else, man created weapons: the most cir- 
cumscribed primitive races have invented engines 
for attack and defense — of wood, bone, stone, as 
they were able. Then the weapon became a tool 
by special adaptation: — the battle-club serves as a 
lever, the tomahawk as a hammer, the flint ax as a 
hatchet, etc. In this manner there is gradually 
formed an arsenal of instruments. ''Inferior to 
most animals as regards certain work that would 
have to be done with the aid of our organic resources 
alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our 
tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth 
cut wood better than we can, we do it still better 
with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with 

^L. Bourdeau, Les Forces de rindustrie, Paris, 1884. This 
very substantial work, abounding in facts, conceived after a 
Bystematic plan, has aided us much in this study. 



274 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, pene- 
trate the trunk of a tree : but the auger, the gimlet, 
the wimble do the same work better and more 
quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's 
teeth for tearing meat ; the hoe better than the mole's 
paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's 
tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar per- 
mits us to rival the fish's fin ; the sail, the wing of 
the bird. The distafT and spindle allow our imi- 
tating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man 
thus reproduces and sums up in his technical con- 
trivances the scattered perfections of the animal 
world. He even succeeds in surpassing them, be- 
cause, in the form of tools, he uses substances and 
combinations of effects that cannot figure as part of 
an organism."^ It is scarcely likely that most of 
these inventions arose from a voluntary imitation of 
animals : but even supposing such an origin, there 
would still remain a fine place for personal creative 
work. Man has produced by conscious effort what 
life realizes by methods that escape us; so that the 
creative imagination in man is a succedaneum of the 
generative powers of nature. 

(2) During the pastoral stage man brought ani- 
mals under subjection and discipline. An animal 
is a machine, ready-made, that needs only to be 
trained to obedience; but this training has required 
and stimulated all sorts of inventions, from the har- 
ness with which to equip it, to the chariots, wagons, 
and roads with which and on which it moves. 
^Op. eit., pp. 45-46. 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 2/5 

(3) Later, the natural motors — air and water — 
have furnished new material for human ingenuity, 
e. g., in navigation; wind- and water-mills, used at 
first to grind grain, then for a multitude of uses — 
sawing, milling, lifting hammers ; etc. 

(4) Lastly, much later, come products of an al- 
ready mature civilization, artificial motors, ex- 
plosives, — powder and all its derivatives and sub- 
stitutes — steam, which has made such great 
progress. 

If the reader please to represent to himself well 
the immense number of facts that we have just in- 
dicated in a few lines; if he please to note that 
every invention, great or small, before becoming a 
fixed and realized thing, was at first an imagination, 
a mere contrivance of the brain, an assembly of new 
combinations or new relations, he will be forced to 
admit that nowhere — not excepting even esthetic 
production — has man imagined to such a great ex- 
tent. 

One of the reasons — though not the only one — 
that supports the contrary opinion is, that by the 
very law of their growing complexity, inventions 
are grafted one on another. In all the useful arts 
improvements have been so slow, and so gradually 
wrought, that each one of them passed unperceived, 
without leaving its author the credit for its dis- 
covery. The immense majority of inventions are 
anonymous — some great names alone survive. But, 
whether individual or collective, imagination re- 
mains imagination. In order that the plow, at first 



276 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

a simple piece of wood hardened by the fire and 
pushed along with the human hand, should become 
what it is to-day, through a long series of modi- 
fications described in the special works, who knows 
how many imaginations have labored ! In the same 
way, the uncertain flame of a resinous branch guid- 
ing vaguely in the night leads us, through a long 
series of inventions, to gas and electric lighting. 
All objects, even the most ordinary and most com- 
mon that now serve us in our everyday-life, are con- 
densed imagination. 

(Ill) More than any other form, mechanical 
imagination depends strictly on physical conditions. 
It cannot rest content with combining images, it 
postulates material factors that impose themselves 
unyieldingly. Compared to it, the scientific imagin- 
ation has much more freedom in the building of 
its hypotheses. In general, every great invention 
has been preceded by a period of abortive attempts. 
History shows that the so-called "initial moment" 
of a mechanical discovery, followed by its improve- 
ments, is the moment ending a series of unsuccess- 
ful trials : we thus skip a phase of pure imagination, 
of imaginative construction that has not been able 
to enter into the mold of an appropriate determin- 
ism. There must have existed innumerable inven- 
tions that we might term mechanical romances, 
which, however, we cannot refer to because they 
have left us no trace, not being born viable. Others 
are known as curiosities because they have 
blazed the path. We know that Otto de Guericke 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 2.*^^ 

made four fruitless attempts before discovering his 
air-pump. The brothers Montgolfier were possessed 
with the desire to make ''imitation clouds," like 
those they saw moving over the Alps. "In order 
to imitate nature," they at first enclosed water- 
vapor in a light, stout case, which fell on cooling. 
Then they tried hydrogen ; then the production of a 
gas with electrical properties; and so on. Thus, 
after a succession of hypotheses and failures, they 
finally succeeded. From the end of the sixteenth 
century there was offered the possibility of com- 
municating at a distance by means of electricity. 
"In a work published in 1624 the Jesuit, Father 
Leurechon, described an imaginary apparatus (by 
means of which, he said, people could converse at a 
distance) for the aid of lovers who, by the connec- 
tion of their movements, would cause a needle to 
move about a dial on which would be written the 
letters of the alphabet ; and the drawing accompany- 
ing the text is almost a picture of Breguet's tele- 
graph." But the author considered it impossible 
"in the absence of lovers having such ability."^ 

Mechanical inventions that fail correspond to 
erroneous or unverified scientific hypotheses. They 
do not emerge from the stage of pure imagination, 

* Quoted by L. Bourdeau (op. cif., p 354), who also mentions 
many other attempts: an anonymous Scot in 1753, Lesage of 
Geneva, 1780, Lhomond (France, 1787), Battencourt (Spain, 
1787), Eeiser, a German (1794), Salva (Madrid, 1796). The 
insuflacient study of dynamic electricity did not permit them 
to succeed. 



278 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

but they are instructive to the psychologist because 
they give in bare form the initial work of the con- 
structive imagination in the technical field. 

There still remain the requirements of reasoning, 
of calculation, of adaptation to the properties of 
matter. But, we repeat, this determinism has sev- 
eral possible forms — one can reach the same goal 
through different means. Besides, these determin- 
ing conditions are not lacking in any type of imagin- 
ation; there is only a difference as between lesser 
and greater. Every imaginative construction from 
the moment that it is little more than a group of 
fancies, a spectral image haunting a dreamer's brain, 
must take on a body, submit to external conditions 
on which it depends, and which materialize it some- 
what. In this respect, architecture is an excellent 
example. It is classed among the fine arts; but it 
is subject to so many limitations that its process 
of invention strongly resembles technical and me- 
chanical creations. Thus it has been possible to say 
that "Architecture is the least personal of all the 
arts." "Before being an art it is an industry in the 
sense that it has nearly always a useful end that is 
imposed on it and rules its manifestations. What- 
ever it builds — a temple, a theater, a palace — it must 
before all else subordinate its work to the end as- 
signed to it in advance. This is not all : — it must 
take account of materials, climate, soil, location, 
habits — of all things that may require much skill, 
tact, calculation, which, however, do not interest 



PRACTICAL IMAGINATION. 279 

art as such, and do not permit architecture to mani- 
fest its purely esthetic qualities."^ 

Thus, at bottom, there is an identity of nature 
between the constructive imagination of the me- 
chanic and that of the artist : the difference is only 
in the end, the means, and the conditions. The 
formula, Ars homo additus naturae, has been too 
often restricted to esthetics — it should comprehend 
everything artificial. Esthetes, doubtless, hold that 
their imagination has for them a loftier quality — 
a disputed question that psychology need not dis- 
cuss; for it, the essential mechanism is the same in 
the two cases : a great mechanic is a poet in his own 
way, because he makes instruments imitating life. 
"Those constructions that at other times are the 
marvel of the ignorant crowd deserve the admira- 
tion of the reflecting : — Something of the power that 
has organized matter seems to have passed into com- 
binations in which nature is imitated or surpassed. 
Our machines, so varied in form and in function, 
are the representatives of a new kingdom inter- 
mediate between senseless and animate forms, hav- 
ing the passivity of the former and the activity of the 
latter, and exploiting everything for our sake. They 
are counterfeits of animate beings, capable of giv- 
ing inert substances a regular functioning. Their 
skeleton of iron, organs of steel, muscles of leather, 
soul of fire, panting or smoking breath, rhythm of 
movement — sometimes even the shrill or plaintive 

^ E. Veron, L 'Esthetique, p. 315. 



28o THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

cries expressing effort or simulating pain : — all that 
contributes to give them a fantastic likeness to life — 
a specter and dream of inorganic life." 

*L. Bourdeau, op. cit., p. 233. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION 

Taking the word "commercial" in its broadest 
signification, I understand by this expression all 
those forms of the constructive imagination that 
have for their chief aim the production and dis- 
tribution of wealth, all inventions making for in- 
dividual or collective enrichment. Even less studied 
than the form preceding, this imaginative manifesta- 
tion reveals as much ingenuity as any other. The 
human mind is largely busied in that way. There 
are inventors of all kinds — the great among these 
equal those whom general opinion ranks as highest. 
Here, as elsewhere, the great body invent nothing, 
live according to tradition, in routine and imitation. 

Invention in the commercial or financial field is 
subject to various conditions with which we are not 
concerned : 

(i) External conditions: — Geographical, poli- 
tical, economic, social, etc., varying according to 
time, place, and people. Such is its external de- 
terminism — human and social here in place of cos- 
mic, physical, as in mechanical invention. 



282 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

(2) Internal, psychological conditions, most of 
which are foreign to the primary and essential in- 
ventive act : — on one hand, foresight, calculation, 
strength of reasoning; — in a word, capacity for re- 
flection; on the other hand, assurance, recklessness, 
soaring into the unknown — in a word, strong capac- 
ity for action. Whence arise, if we leave out the 
mixed forms, two principal types — the calculating, 
the venturesome. In the former the rational ele- 
ment is first. They are cautious, calculating, selfish 
exploiters, with no great moral or social preoccu- 
pations. In the latter, the active and emotional ele- 
ment predominates. They have a broader sweep. 
Of this sort were the merchant-sailors of Tyre, 
Carthage, and Greece ; the merchant-travelers of the 
Middle Ages, the mercantile and gain-hungry ex- 
plorers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth 
centuries ; later, in a changed form, the organizers of 
great companies, the inventors of monopolies, 
American "trusts," etc. These are the great imagin- 
ative minds. 

Eliminating, then, from our subject, what is not 
the purely imaginative element in order to study 
it alone, I see only two points for us to treat, if we 
would avoid repetition — at the initial moment of in- 
vention, the intuitive act that is its germ; during 
the period of development and organization, the 
necessary and exclusive role of schematic images. 

I 

By "intuition" we generally understand a prac- 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 283 

tical, immediate judgment that goes straight to the 
goal. Tact, wisdom, scent, divination, are synony- 
mous or equivalent expressions. First let us note 
that intuition does not belong exclusively to this 
part of our subject, for it is found in parvo through- 
out; but in commercial invention it is preponderat- 
ing on account of the necessity of perceiving quickly 
and surely, and of grasping chances. "Genius for 
business,'* someone has said, "consists in making 
exact hypotheses regarding the fluctuations of 
values.'' To characterize the mental state is easy, 
if it is a matter merely of giving examples; very 
difficult, if one attempts to discover its mechanism. 

The physician who in a trice diagnoses a disease, 
who, on a higher level, groups symptoms in order 
to deduce a new disease from them, like Duchenne 
de Boulogne; the politician who knows human na- 
ture, the merchant who scents a good venture, etc., 
furnish examples of intuition. It does not depend 
on the degree of culture; — not to mention women, 
whose insight into practical matters is well known, 
there are ignorant people — peasants, even savages — 
who, in their limited sphere, are the equals of fine 
diplomats. 

But all these facts teach us nothing concerning its 
psychological nature. Intuition presupposes ac- 
quired experience of a special nature that gives the 
judgment its validity and turns it in a particular 
direction. Nevertheless, this accumulated knowl- 
edge of itself gives no evidence as to the future. 
Now, every intuition is an anticipation of the future, 



284 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

resulting from only two processes : — inductive or de- 
ductive reasoning, e. g., the chemist foreseeing a 
reaction; imagination, i. e., a representative con- 
struction. Which is the chief process here? Evi- 
dently the former, because it is not a matter of fan- 
cied hypothesis, but of adaptation of former expe- 
rience to a new case. Intuition resembles logical 
operations much more than it does imaginative com- 
binations. We may liken it to unconscious reason- 
ing, if we are not afraid of the seeming contradic- 
tion of this expression which supposes a logical 
operation without consciousness of the middle term. 
Although questionable, it is perhaps to be preferred 
to other proposed explanations — such as automat- 
ism, habit, ''instinct," "nervous connections." Car- 
penter, who as promoter of "unconscious cerebra- 
tion," deserves to be consulted, likens this state to 
reflection. In ending, he reprints a letter that 
John Stuart Mill wrote to him on the subject, in 
which he says in substance that this capacity is found 
in persons who have experience and lean toward 
practical things, but attach little importance to 
theory.^ 

Every intuition, then, becomes concrete as a judg- 
ment, equivalent to a conclusion. But what seems 
obscure and even mysterious in it is the fact that, 
from among many possible solutions, it finds at the 
first shot the proper one. In my opinion this diffi- 
culty arises largely from a partial comprehension 
of the problem. By "intuition" people mean only 
* Carpenter, Mental Physiology, chapter XI (end). 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 285 

cases in which the divination is correct; they forget 
the other, far more numerous, cases that are failures. 
The act by which one reaches a conclusion is a spe- 
cial case of it. What constitutes the originality of 
the operation is not its accuracy, but its rapidity — 
the latter is the essential character, the former ac- 
cessory. 

Further, it must be acknowledged that the gift of 
seeing correctly is an inborn quality, vouchsafed to 
one, denied to another: — people are born with it, 
just as they are born right- or left-handed: expe- 
rience does not give it — only permits it to be put to 
use. As for knowing why the intuitive act now suc- 
ceeds and at another time fails, that is a question 
that comes down to the natural distinction between 
accurate and erroneous minds, which we do not need 
to examine here. 

Without dwelling longer on this initial stage, let 
us return to the commercial imagination, and follow 
it in its development. 

II 

The human race passed through a pre-commercial 
age. The Australians, Fuegians, and their class 
seem to have had no idea whatever of exchange. 
This primitive period, which was long, corresponds 
to the age of the horde or large clan. Commercial 
invention, arising like the other forms from needs, — 
simple and indispensable at first, artificial and super- 
fluous later, — could not arise in that dim period 
when the groups had almost their sole relations with 



286 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

one another as war. Nothing called it to arise. But 
at a higher stage the rudimentary form of com- 
merce, exchange in kind or truck, appeared early 
and almost everywhere. Then this long, cumber- 
some, inconvenient method gave place to a more 
ingenious invention — the employment of "standard 
values," beings or material objects serving as a 
common measure for all the rest : — their choice va- 
ried with the time, place, and people — e. g., certain 
shells, salt, cocoa-seeds, cloth, straw-matting, cattle, 
slaves, etc. ; but this innovation held all the remain- 
der in the germ, for it was the first attempt at sub- 
stitution. But during the earliest period of com- 
mercial evolution the chief effort at invention con- 
sisted of finding increasingly more simple methods 
in the mechanism of exchange. Thus, there suc- 
ceeded to these disparate values, the precious metals, 
in the form of powder and ingots, subject to theft 
and the inconveniences of weighing. Then, money 
of fixed denomination, struck under the authority of 
a chief or of a social group. Finally, gold and silver 
are replaced by the letter of credit, the bank check, 
and the numerous forms of fiduciary money.^ 

* Historically, the evolution has not always proceeded strictly 
in this order, which, however, seems the most logical one. 
Negotiable drafts were known to the Assyrians and Carthagin- 
ians. For thousands of years Egypt used ingots, not real 
money, but it was acquainted with fiduciary money. In the 
new world, the Peruvians made use of the scale, the Aztecs 
were ignorant of its use, etc. For details, see Letourneau, 
L 'Evolution du commerce dans les diverses races humaines, 
Paris, 1897, especially pp. 264, 330, 354, 384, etc. 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 287 

Every one of these forward steps is due to in- 
ventors. I say inventors, in the plural, because it 
is proven that every change in the means of ex- 
change has been imagined several times, in several 
ages — though in the same way — on the surface of 
our earth. 

Summing up — the inventive labor of this period 
is reduced to creating increasingly more simple and 
more rapid methods of substitution in the commer- 
cial mechanism. 

The appearance of commerce on a large scale has 
depended on the state of agriculture, industry, ways 
of communication, social and economic conditions 
and political extension. It came into being toward 
the end of the Roman Republic. After the interrup- 
tion of the Middle Ages the activity is taken up 
again by the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, 
etc. ; in the fifteenth century with the great maritime 
discoveries; in the sixteenth century by the Con- 
quistadores, hungering for adventure and wealth; 
later on, by the mixed expeditions, whose expenses 
are defrayed by merchants in common, and which 
are often accompanied by armed bands that fight 
for them; lastly comes the incorporation of great 
companies that have been wittily dubbed ''Conquista- 
dores of the counting-house.*' 

We now come to the moment when commercial 
invention attains its complex form and must move 
great masses. Taken as a whole, its psychological 
mechanism is the same as that of any other creative 
work. In the first instance, the idea arises, from 



288 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

inspiration, from reflection, or by chance. Then 
comes a period of fermenting during which the in- 
ventor sketches his construction in images, repre- 
sents to himself the material to be worked upon, the 
grouping of stockholders, the making up of a cap- 
ital, the mechanism of buying and selling, etc. All 
this differs from the genesis of an esthetic or me- 
chanical work only in the end, or in the nature of the 
images. In the second phase it is necessary to pro- 
ceed to execution — a castle in the air must be made 
a solid structure. Then appear a thousand obstruc- 
tions in the details that must be overcome. As 
everywhere else, minor inventions become grafted 
on the principal invention ; the author lets us see the 
poverty or richness in resource of his mind. Finally, 
the work is triumphant, fails, or is only half-suc- 
cessful. 

Did it keep only to these general traits, commer- 
cial imagination would be merely the reiteration, 
with slight changes, of forms already studied; but 
it has characteristics all its own that must be dis- 
tinguished. 

(i) It is a combining or tactical imagination. 
Heretofore, we have met nothing like it. This spe- 
cial mark is derived from the very nature of its 
determinism, which is very different from that lim- 
iting the scientific or mechanical imagination. Every 
commercial project, in order to emerge from the in- 
ternal, purely imaginative phase, and become a 
reality, requires "coming to a head," very exact 
calculation of frequently numerous, divergent, even 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 289 

contrary elements. The American dealer speculat- 
ing in grain is under the absolute necessity of being 
quickly and surely informed regarding the agri- 
cultural situation in all countries of the world that 
are rich in grain, that export or import; in regard 
to the probable chances of rain or drouth ; the tariff 
duties of the various countries, etc. Lacking that, 
he buys and sells haphazard. Moreover, as he deals 
in enormous quantities, the least error means great 
losses, the smallest profit on a unit is of account, 
and is multiplied and increased into a noticeable 
gain. 

Besides that initial intuition that shows opportune 
business and moments, commercial imagination pre- 
supposes a well-studied, detailed campaign for at- 
tack and defense, a rapid and reliable glance at 
every moment of execution in order to incessantly 
modify this plan — it is a kind of war. All this 
totality of special conditions results from a general 
condition, — namely, competition, strife. We shall 
come back to this point at the end of the chapter. 

Let us follow to the end the working of this 
creative imagination. Like the other forms, this 
kind of invention arises from a need, a desire — that 
of the spreading of "self- feeling,'' of the expansion 
of the individual under the form of enrichment. 
But this tendency, and with it the resulting imagin- 
ative creation, can undergo changes. 

It is a well-known law of the emotional life that 
what is at first sought as a means may become an 
end and be desired for itself. A very sensual pas- 



290 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

sion may at length undergo a sort of idealization;- 
people study a science at first because it is useful, and 
later because of its fascination; and we may desire 
money in order to spend it, and later in order to 
hoard it. Here it is the same : the financial inventor 
is often possessed with a kind of intoxication — he 
no longer labors for lucre, but for art ; he becomes, 
in his own way, an author of romance. His imag- 
ination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks 
only its complete expansion, the assertion and erup- 
tion of its creative power, the pleasure of invent- 
ing for invention's sake,^ daring the extraordinary, 
the unheard-of — it is the victory of pure construc- 
tion. The natural equilibrium between the three 
necessary elements of creation — ^mobility, combina- 
tion of images, calculation — is destroyed. The ra- 
tional element gives way, is obliterated, and the 
speculator is launched into adventure with the possi- 
bility of a dazzling success or astounding catastro- 
phe. But let us note well that the primary and sole 
cause of this change is in the affective and motor 
element, in an hypertrophy of the lust for power, in 
an unmeasured and morbid want of expansion of 
self. Here, as everywhere, the source of invention 
is the emotional nature of the inventor. 

(2) A second special character of commercial 
imagination is the exclusive employment of sche- 
matic representations. Although this process is also 
met with in the sciences and especially in social 

' This condition has been well-described by various novelists, 
among them Zola, in Money. 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 29I 

inventions, the imaginative type that we are now 
considering has the privilege of using them with- 
out exception. This, then, is the proper moment 
for a description. 

By "schematic images'' I mean those that are, by 
their very nature, intermediate between the concrete 
image and the pure concept, but approach more 
nearly the concept. We have already pointed out 
very different kinds of representations — concrete 
images, material pertaining to plastic and mechanical 
imagination; the emotional abstractions of the dif- 
fluent imagination; affective images, the type of 
which is found in musicians; symbolic images, fa- 
miliar in mystics. It may seem improper to add 
another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless 
subtlety. Indeed, there are no images in general 
that, according to the ordinary conception, would 
be copies of reality. Even their separation into 
visual, auditory, motor, etc., is n^t sufficient, be- 
cause it distinguishes them only with regard to their 
origin. There are other differences. We have seen 
that the image, like everything living, undergoes 
corrosions, damages, twisting, and transformation : 
whence it comes about that this remainder of former 
impressions varies according to its composition, i. e., 
in simplicity, complexity, grouping of its constitu- 
tive elements, etc., and takes on many aspects. On 
the other hand, as the difference between the chief 
types of creative imagination depends in part on the 
materials employed — on the nature of the images 
that serve in mental building — a precise determina- 



292 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

tion of the nature of the images belonging to each 
type is not an idle operation. 

In order to clearly explain what we mean by 
schematic images, let us represent by a line, PC, the 
scale of images acording to the degree of complex- 
ity, from the percept, P, to the concept, C 



-G- 



As far as I am aware, this determination of all 
the degrees has never been made. The work would 
be delicate; I do not regard it as impossible. I 
have no intention to undertake it, even as I do not 
pretend that I have given above the complete list 
of the various forms of images. 

If, then, we consider the foregoing figure merely 
as a means of representing the gradation to the eye, 
the image in moving, by hypothesis, from the mo- 
ment of perception, P, is less and less in contact 
with reality, becomes simplified, impoverished, and 
loses some of its constitutive elements. At X it 
crosses the middle threshold to approach nearer and 
nearer to the concept. At G let us locate generic 
images, primitive forms of generalization, whose 
nature and process of becoming are well-known;^ 
we should place farther along, at S, schematic 
images, which require a higher function of mind. 
Indeed, the generic image results from a spontane- 
ous fusion of like or very analogous images — such 
as the vague representation of the oak, the horse, 

*For further details on this point, we refer the reader to 
our Evolution of General Ideas (chapter I). 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 293 

the negro, etc.; it belongs to only one class of ob- 
jects. The schematic image results from a volun- 
tary act; it is not limited to exact resemblances — it 
rises into abstraction; so it is scarcely accompanied 
by a fleeting representation of concrete objects — it 
is almost reduced to the word. At a higher level, 
it is freed from all sensuous elements or pictures, 
and is reduced, in the present instance, to the mere 
notion of value — it is not different from a pure con- 
cept. While the artist and the mechanic build with 
concrete images, the commercial imagination can 
act directly neither on things nor on their imme- 
diate representations, because from the time that it 
goes beyond the primitive age it requires a substi- 
tution of increasing generality; materials become 
values that are in turn reducible to symbols. Con- 
sequently, it proceeds as in the stating and solving 
of abstract problems in which, after having sub- 
stituted for things and their relations figures and 
letters, calculation works with signs, and indirectly 
with things. 

Aside from the first moment of invention, the 
finding of the idea — an invariable psychological 
state — it must be recognized that in its development 
and detailed construction the commercial imagina- 
tion is made up chiefly of calculations and combina- 
tions that hardly permit concrete images. If we 
admit, then, — and this is unquestionable — that these 
are the materials par excellence of the creative imag- 
ination, we shall be disposed to hold that the imag- 
inative type we are now studying is a kind of in- 



294 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

volution, a case of impoverishment — an unacceptable 
thesis as regards the invention itself, but strictly 
acceptable as regards the conditions that necessity 
imposes upon it. 

In closing, let us note that financial imagination 
does not always have as its goal the enriching of an 
individual or of a closely limited group of asso- 
ciates : it can aim higher, act on greater masses, ad- 
dress itself strenuously to a problem as complex as 
the reformation of the finances of a powerful state. 
All the civilized nations count in their history men 
who imagined a financial system and succeeded, 
with various fortunes, in making it prevail. The 
word "system," consecrated by usage, makes un- 
necessary any comment, and relates this form of 
im.agination to that of scientists and philosophers. 
Every system rests on a master-conception, on an 
ideal, a center about which there is assembled the 
mental construction made up of imagination and 
calculation which, if circumstances permit, must 
take shape, must show that it can live. 

Let us call to mind the author of the first, or at 
least, of the most notorious of these "systems." 
Law claimed that he was applying "the methods of 
philosophy, the principles of Descartes, to social 
economy, abandoned hitherto to chance and em- 
piricism." His ideal was the institution of credit 
by the state. Commerce, said he, was during its 
first stage the exchange of merchandise in kind; 
in a second stage, exchange by means of another, 
more managable, commodity or universal value, se- 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 295 

curity equivalent to the object it represented; it 
must enter a third stage when exchange will be 
made by a purely conventional sign having no value 
of its own. Paper represents money, just as the 
latter represents goods, "with the difference that 
the paper is not security, but a simple promise, con- 
stituting credit." The state must do systematically 
what individuals have done instinctively; but it 
must also do what individuals cannot do — create 
currency by printing on the paper of exchange the 
seal of public authority. We know the history of 
the downfall of this system, the eulogies and criti- 
cisms it has received : — but because of the original- 
ity and boldness of his views, the inexhaustible fe- 
cundity of his lesser inventions, Law holds an un- 
disputed place among the great imaginative minds. 

Ill 

We said above that commerce, in its higher mani- 
festations, is a kind of war.^ Here, then, would 
be the place to study the military imagination. The 
subject cannot be treated save by a man of the pro- 
fession, so I shall limit myself to a few brief re- 
marks based on personal information, or gleaned 
from authorities. 

Between the various types of imagination hitherto 

studied we have shown great differences as regards 

*A general, a former professor in the War College, told me 
that when he heard a great merchant tell of the quick and sure 
service of his commercial information, the conception of the 
whole, and the care in all the details of his operations, he could 
not keep from exclaiming, * * Why, that is war I ' * 



296 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

their external conditions. While the so-called forms 
of pure imagination, whence esthetic, mythic, reli- 
gious, mystic creations arise, can realize themselves 
by submitting to material conditions that are simple 
and not very exacting, the others can become em- 
bodied only when they satisfy an ensemble of numer- 
ous, inevitable, rigorously determined conditions; 
the goal is fixed, the materials are rigid, there is 
little choice of the appropriate means. If there be 
added to the inflexible laws of nature unforeseen 
human passions and determinations, as in political 
or social invention, or the offensive combination of 
opponents, as in commerce and war ; then the imag- 
inative construction is confronted with problems of 
constantly growing complexity. The most inge- 
nious inventor cannot invent an object as a whole, 
letting his work develop through an immanent 
logic : — the early plan must be continually modified 
and readapted; and the difficulty arises not merely 
from the multiple elements of the problem to be 
solved, but from ceaseless changes in their positions. 
So one can advance only step by step, and go for- 
ward by calculations and strict examination of pos- 
sibilities. Hence it results that underneath this 
thick covering of material and intellectual condi- 
tions (calculation, reasoning), spontaneity (the apt- 
ness for finding new combinations, "that art of in- 
venting without which we hardly advance"^) re- 
veals itself to few clear-sighted persons ; but, in spite 
of everything, this creative power is everywhere, 
* Leibniz. 



COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION. 297 

flowing like subterranean streams, a vivifying 
agency. 

These general remarks, although not applicable 
exclusively to the military imagination, find their 
justification in it, because of its extreme complexity. 
Let us rapidly enumerate, proceeding from without 
inwards, the enormous mass of representations that 
it has to move and combine in order to make its 
construction adequate to reality, able at a precise 
moment to cease being a dream: — (i) Arms, en- 
gines, instruments of destruction and supply, vary- 
ing according to time, place, richness of the coun- 
try, etc. (2) The equally variable human element 
— mercenaries, a national army ; strong, tried troops 
or weak and new. (3) The general principles of 
war, acquired by the study of the masters. (4) More 
personal is the power of reflection, the habitual 
solving of tactical and strategic problems. "Battles," 
said Napoleon, "are thought out at length, and in 
order to be successful it is necessary that we think 
several times in regard to what may happen." All 
the foregoing should be headed "science." Ad- 
vancing more and more within the secret psychology 
of the individual, we come to art, the characteristic 
work of pure imagination. (5) Let us note the 
exact, rapid intuition at the commencement of the 
opoprtune moments. (6) Lastly, the creative ele- 
ment, the conception, a natural gift bearing the hall- 
mark of each inventor. Thus "the Napoleonic es- 
thetics was always derived from a single concept, 
based on a principle that may be summed up thus : — 



298 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Strict economy wherever it can be done; expendi- 
ture without Hmit on the decisive point. This prin- 
ciple inspires the strategy of the master; it directs 
everything, especially his battle-tactics, in which it 
is synthetized and summed up/ 

Such, in analytical terms, appears the hidden 
spring that makes everything move, and it is to be 
attributed neither to experience nor to reasoning, 
nor to wise combinations, for it arises from the in- 
nermost depths of the inventor. "The principle 
exists in him in a latent state, i. e., in the depths of 
the unconscious, and unconsciously it is that he 
applies it, when the shock of the circumstances, of 
goal and means, causes to flash from his brain the 
spark stimulating the artistic solution par excellence, 
one that reaches the limits of human perfection."^ 

'General Bonnal, Les Maitres de la Guerre, 1899, p. 137. 
"In him (Napoleon), '* says the writer, *' there was something 
of the poet, and one could explain all his acts by means of 
this singular complex, a medley of imagination, passion, and 
calculation. The dreams of an Ossian with the positive cast 
of mind of a mathematician and the passions of a Corsican — 
such were the heterogeneous elements that clashed in that 
powerful organization" (p. 151). 

'Op. cit., p. 6. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION^ 

When the human mind creates, it can use only- 
two classes of ideas as materials to embody its idea, 
viz. : 

(i) Natural phenomena, the forces of the or- 
ganic and inorganic worlds. In its scientific form, 
seeking to explain, to know, it ends in the hypothe- 
sis, a disinterested creation. In its industrial aspect, 
aiming towards application and utilization, it ends 
in practical, interested inventions. 

(2) Human, i. e., psychic elements — instincts, 
passions, feelings, ideas, and actions. Esthetic crea- 
tion is the disinterested form, social invention is the 
utilitarian form. 

Consequently, we may say that invention in 
science resembles invention in the fine arts, both 
being speculative; and that mechanical and indus- 
trial invention approaches social invention through 
a common tendency toward the practical. I shall 
not insist on this distinction, which, to be definite, 

*This title, as will be seen later, corresponds only in part 
to the contents of this chapter. 



300 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

rests only on partial characters; I merely wish to 
mention that invention, whose role in social, po- 
litical and moral evolution is large, must, in order 
to be a success, adopt certain processes while neglect- 
ing others. This the Utopians do not do. 

The development of human societies depends on 
a multitude of factors, such as race, geographic and 
economic conditions, war, etc., which we need 
neither enumerate nor study. One only belongs to 
our topic — the successive appearance of idealistic 
conceptions that, like all other creations of mind, 
tend to realize themselves, the moral ideal consist- 
ing of new combinations arising from the predomi- 
nance of one feeling, or from an unconscious elab- 
oration (inspiration), or from analogy. 

At the beginning of civilizations we meet semi- 
historic, semi-legendary persons — Manu, Zoroaster, 
Moses, Confucius, etc., who were inventors or re- 
formers in the social and moral spheres. That a 
part of the inventions attributed to them must he 
credited to predecessors or successors is probable; 
but the invention, no matter who is its author, re- 
mains none the less invention. We have said else- 
where, and may repeat, that the expression inventor 
in morals may seem strange to some, because we are 
imbued with the notion of a knowledge of good and 
evil that is innate, universal, bestowed on all men 
and in all times. If we admit, on the other hand, 
as observation compels us to do, not a ready-made 
morality, but a morality in the making, it must be, 
indeed, the creation of an individual or of a group. 



UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 30I 

Everybody recognizes inventors in geometry, in 
music, in the plastic and mechanic arts; but there 
have also been men who, in their moral dispositions, 
were very superior to their contemporaries, and 
were promoters, initiators.^ For reasons of which 
we are ignorant, analogous to those that produce a 
great poet or a great painter, there arise moral 
geniuses who feel strongly what others do not feel 
at all, just as does a great poet, in comparison with 
the crowd. But it is not enough that they feel : they 
must create, they must realize their ideal in a belief 
and in rules of conduct accepted by other men. All 
the founders of great religions were inventors of 
this kind. Whether the invention comes from 
themselves alone, or from a collectivity of which 
they are the sum and incarnation, matters little. In 
them moral invention has found its complete form ; 
like all invention, it is organic. The legend relates 
that Buddha, possessed with the desire of finding 
the perfect road of salvation for himself and all other 
men, gives himself up, at first, to an extravagant 
asceticism. He perceives the uselessness of this 
and renounces it. For seven years he meditates, 
then he beholds the light. He comes into posses- 
sion of knowledge of the means that give freedom 
from Karma (the chain of causes and effects), and 
from the necessity of being born again. Soon he 
renounces the life of contemplation, and during fifty 
years of ceaseless wanderings preaches, makes con- 

^ For facts in support, see the Psychology of the Emotions, 
Second Part, chapter VIII. 



302 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

verts, organizes his followers. Whether true or 
false historically, this tale is psychologically exact. 
A fixed and besetting idea, trial followed by failure, 
the decisive moment of Eureka I then the inner reve- 
lation manifests itself outwardly, and through the 
labors of the master and his disciples becomes com- 
plete, imposes itself on millions of men. In what 
respect does this mode of creation differ from others, 
at least in the practical order? 

Thus, from the viewpoint of our present study, 
we may divide ethics into living and dead. Living 
ethics arise from needs and desires, stimulate an 
imaginative construction that becomes fixed in ac- 
tions, habits and laws ; they offer to men a concrete, 
positive ideal which, under various and often con- 
trary aspects, is always happiness. The lifeless 
ethics, from which invention has withdrawn, arise 
from reflection upon, and the rational codification of, 
living ethics. Stored away in the writings of phi- 
losophers, they remain theoretical, speculative, with- 
out appreciable influence on the masses, mere ma- 
terial for dissertation and commentary. 

In proportion as we recede from distant origins 
the light grows, and invention in the social and 
moral order becomes manifest as the work of two 
principal categories of minds — the fantastic, the 
positive. The former, purely imaginative beings, 
visionaries, Utopians, are closely related to poets and 
artists. The latter, practical creators or reformers, 
capable of organizing, belong to the family of in- 



UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 303 

ventors in the industrial-commercial-mechanical or- 
der. 



The chimerical form of imagination, applied to 
the social sciences, is the one that, taking account 
neither of the external determinism nor of practical 
requirements, spreads out freely. Such are the cre- 
ators of ideal republics, seeking for a lost or to-be- 
discovered-in-the-future golden age, constructing, as 
their fancy pleases, human societies in their large 
outlines and in their details. They are social novel- 
ists, who bear the same relation to sociologists that 
poets do to critics. Their dreams, subjected merely 
to the conditions of an inner logic, have lived only 
within themselves, an ideal life, without ever pass- 
ing through the test of application. It is the 
creative imagination in its unconscious form, re- 
strained to its first phase. 

Nothing is better known than their names and 
their works : The Republic of Plato, Thomas More's 
Utopia, Campanella's City of the Sun, Harrington's 
Oceana, Fenelon's Salente, etc.^ However idealistic 
they may be, one could easily show that all the 
materials of their ideal are taken from the surround- 
ing reality, they bear the stamp of the milieu, be it 

*Our author does not mention Bacon's New Atlantis, one of 
the best specimens of its kind. ** Wisest Verulam," active 
and distinguished in so many fields, is not amenable to rules, 
and is here found among ** idealists, " as elsewhere among the 
foremost empiricists and iconoclasts. (Tr.) 



304 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

Greek, English, Christian, etc., in which they lived, 
and it should not be forgotten that in the Utopians 
everything is not chimerical — some have been re- 
vealers, others have acted as stimuli or ferments. 
True to its mission, which is to make innovations, 
the constructive imagination is a spur that arouses; 
it hinders social routine and prevents stagnation. 

Among the creators of ideal societies there is one, 
almost contemporary, who would deserve a study 
of individual psychology — Ch. Fourier. If it is a 
question merely of fertility in pure construction, I 
doubt whether we could find one superior to him — 
he is equal to the highest, with the special charac- 
teristic of being at the same time exuberant to de- 
lirium and exact in details to the least minutiae. He 
is such a fine type of the imaginative intellect that he 
deserves that we stop a moment. 

His cosmogony seems the work of an omnipotent 
demiurge fashioning the universe at will. His con- 
ception of the future world with its "counter-cast" 
creations, where the present ugliness and troubles 
of animal reign become changed into their opposites, 
where there will be "anti-lions," "anti-crocodiles," 
"anti-whales," etc., is one example of hundreds 
showing his inexhaustible richness in fantastic vis- 
ions: the work of an imagination that is hot and 
overflowing, with no rational preoccupation. 

On the other hand, his psychogony, based on the 
idea of metempsychosis borrowed from the Orient, 
gives itself up to numerical vagaries. Assuming for 
every soul a periodical rebirth, he assigns it first a 



UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 305 

period of "ascending subversion," the first phase 
of which lasts five thousand years, the second thirty- 
six thousand; then comes a period of completion, 
9,000 years; and then a period of "descending sub- 
version," whose first stage is 27,000 years, and the 
second 4,000 years — a total of 81,000 years. This 
form of imagination is already known to us.^ 

The principal part of his psychology, the theory 
of the emotions, questionable in many respects, is 
relatively rational. But in the construction of hu- 
man society, the duality of his imagination — power- 
ful and minute — reappears. We know his method- 
ical organization : the group, composed of seven to 
nine persons; the series, comprising twenty- four to 
thirty-two groups ; a phalanx that includes eighteen 
groups, constituting the phalanstery; the small city, 
a general center of phalanges; the provincial city, 
the imperial capital, the universal metropolis. He 
has a passion for classification and ordering; "his 
phalanstery works like a clock." 

This rare Imaginative type well deserved a few 
remarks, because of its mixture of apparent exact- 
ness and a natural, unconscious utopianism and ex- 
travagance. For, beneath all these pulsating inven- 
tions of precise, petty details, the foundation is none 
the less a purely speculative construction of the 
mind. Let us add an incredible abuse of analogy, 
that chief intellectual instrument of invention, of 
which only the reading of his books can give an 

* See above, Part III, chapter III. 



306 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

idea.^ Heinrich Heine said of Michelet, **He has a 
Hindoo imagination." The term would apply still 
better to Fourier, in whom coexist unchecked pro- 
fusion of images and the taste for numerical accum- 
ulations. People have tried to explain this abund- 
ance of figures and calculation as a professional 
habit — he was for a long time a bookkeeper or 
cashier, always an excellent accountant. But this 
is taking the effect for cause. This dualism existed 
in the very nature of his mind, and he took ad- 
vantage of it in his calling. The study of the 
numerical imagination^ has shown how it is fre- 
quently met with among orientals, whose imagina- 
tive development is unquestioned, and we have seen 
why the idealistic imagination agrees so well with 
the indefinite series of numbers and makes use of it 
as a vehicle. 

II 

With practical inventors and reformers the ideal 
falls — not that they sacrifice it for their personal 
interests, but because they have a comprehension of 
possibilities. The imaginative construction must be 
corrected, narrowed, mutilated, if it is to enter into 

*We recommend to the reader the "Epilogue sur 1 'Analo- 
gic, " in Le Monde Industriel, pp. 244 ff ., where he will learn 
that the "goldfinch depicts the child born of poor parents; 
the pheasant represents the jealous husband; the cock is the 
symbol of the man of the world ; the cabbage is the emblem of 
mysterious love," etc. There are several pages in this tone, 
with alleged reasons in support of the statements. 

• See above, chapter II. 



UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 307 

the narrow frame of the conditions of existence, un- 
til it becomes adapted and determined. This process 
has been described several times, and it is needless 
to repeat it here in other terms. Nevertheless, the 
ideal — understanding by this term the unifying 
principle that excites creative work and supports it 
in its development — undergoes metamorphosis and 
must be not only individual but collective; the cre- 
ation does not realize itself save through a "com- 
munion of minds," by a co-operation of feelings and 
of wills ; the work of one conscious individual must 
become the work of a social consciousness. 

That form of imagination, creating and organiz- 
ing social groups, manifests itself in various degrees 
according to the tendency and power of creators. 

There are the founders of small societies, re- 
ligious in form — the Essenes, the earliest Christian 
communities, the monastic orders of the Orient and 
Occident, the great Catholic or Mohammedan con- 
gregations, the semi-lay, semi-religious sects like 
the Moravian Brotherhood, the Shakers, Mormons, 
etc. Less complete because it does not cover the 
individual altogether in all the acts of life is the 
creation of secret associations, professional imions, 
learned societies, etc. The founder conceives an 
ideal of complete living or one limited to a given 
end, and puts it into practice, having for material 
men grouped of their free choice, or by coopta- 
tion. 

There is invention operating on great masses — 
social or political invention strictly so called — ordi- 



308 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

narily not proposed but imposed, which, however, 
despite its coercive power, is subject to requirements 
even more numerous than mechanical, industrial, or 
commercial invention. It has to struggle against 
natural forces, but most of all against human forces 
— inherited habits, customs, traditions. It must 
make terms with dominant passions and ideas, find- 
ing its justification, like all other creation, only in 
success. 

Without entering into the details of this inevitable 
determination, which would require useless repeti- 
tion, we may sum up the role of the constructive 
imagination in social matters by saying that it has 
undergone a regression — i. e., that its area of devel- 
opment has been little by little narrowed; not that 
inventive genius, reduced to pure construction in 
images, has suffered an eclipse, but on its part it 
has had to make increasingly greater room for ex- 
periment, rational elements, calculation, inductions 
and deductions that permit foresight — for practical 
necessities. 

If we omit the spontaneous, instinctive, semi- 
conscious invention of the earliest ages, that was 
sufficient for primitive societies, and keep to cre- 
ations that were the result of reflection and of great 
pretension, we can roughly distinguish three suc- 
cessive periods : 

(i) A very long idealistic phase (Antiquity, Re- 
naissance) when triumphed the pure imagination, 
and the play of the free fancy that spends itself in 
social novels. Between the creation of the mind 



UTOPIAN IMAGINATION. 309 

and the life of contemporary society there was no 
relation; they were worlds apart, strangers to one 
another. The true Utopians scarcely troubled them- 
selves to make applications. Plato and More — 
would they have wished to realize their dreams ? 

(2) An intermediate phase, when an attempt is 
made to pass from the ideal to the practical, from 
pure speculation to social facts. Already, in the 
eighteenth century, some philosophers (Locke, 
Rousseau) drew up constitutions, at the request of 
interested persons. During this period, when the 
work of the imagination, instead of merely becom- 
ing fixed in books, tends to become objectified in 
acts, we find many failures and some successes. Let 
us recall the fruitless attempts of the "phalan- 
steries" in France, in Algeria, Brazil, and in the 
United States. Robert Owen was more fortunate;^ 
in four years he reformed New Larnak, after his 
ideal, and with varying fortune founded short-lived 
colonies. Saint-Simonism has not entirely died out; 
the primitive civilization after his ideal rapidly dis- 
appeared, but some of his theories have filtered into 
or have become incorporated with other doctrines. 

(3) A phase in which imaginative creation be- 
comes subordinated to practical life: The concep- 
tion of society ceases to be purely idealistic or con- 

^For an excellent account of the principles of these move- 
ments, see Eae, Contemporary Socialism; for Owen's ideals, 
his AutoMography ; and for an account of some of the trials, 
Bushee's "Communistic Societies in the United States," 
Political Science Quarterly, vol. XX, pp. 625 ff. (Tr.) 



3IO THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

structed a priori by deduction from a single princi- 
ple; it recognizes the conditions of its environment, 
adapts itself to the necessities of its development. 
It is the passage from the absolutely autonomous 
state of the imagination to a period when it sub- 
mits to the laws of a rational imperative. In other 
words, the transition from the esthetic to the sci- 
entific, and especially the practical, form. Social- 
ism is a well-known and excellent example of this. 
Compare its former Utopias, down to about the mid- 
dle of the last century, with its contemporary forms, 
and without difficulty we can appreciate the amount 
of imaginative elements lost in favor of an at least 
equivalent quantity of rational elements and positive 
calculations. 



CONCLUSION. 



CONCLUSION 



The Foundations of the Creative Imagination 

Why is the human mind able to create? In a 
certain sense this question may seem idle, childish, 
and even worse. We might just as well ask why 
does man have eyes and not an electric apparatus 
like the torpedo? Why does he perceive directly 
sounds but not the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays? 
Why does he perceive changes of odors but not mag- 
netic changes? And so on ad infinitum. We will 
put the question in a very different manner: Being 
given the physical and mental constitution of man 
such as it is at present, how is the creative imagina- 
tion a natural product of this constitution ? 

Man is able to create for two principal reasons. 
The first, motor in nature, is found in the action 
of his needs, appetites, tendencies, desires. The 
second is the possibility of a spontaneous revival of 
images that become grouped in new combination. 

I. We have already shown in detail^ that the 

* See above, Part I, chapter II. 



314 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

hypothesis of a "creative instinct," if the expression 
is used not as an abbreviated or metaphorical for- 
mula but in the strict sense, is a pure chimera, an 
empty entity. In studying the various types of im- 
agination we have always been careful to note that 
every mode of creation may be reduced, as regards 
its beginnings, to a tendency, a want, a special, de- 
terminate desire. Let us recall for the last time these 
initial conditions of all invention — these desires, con- 
scious or not, that excite it. 

The wants, tendencies, desires — it matters not 
which term we adopt — the whole of which consti- 
tutes the instinct of individual preservation, have 
been the generators of all inventions dealing with 
food-getting, housing, making of weapons, instru- 
ments, and machines. 

The need for individual and social expansion or 
extension has given rise to military, commercial, 
and industrial invention, and in its disinterested 
form, esthetic creation. 

As for the sexual instinct, its psychic fertility is 
in no way less than the physical — it is an inexhausti- 
ble source of imagination in everyday life as w^ell as 
in art. 

The wants of man in contact with his fellows 
have engendered, through instinctive or reflective 
action, the numerous social and practical creations 
regulating human groups, and they are rough or 
complex, stable or unstable, just or unjust, kindly 
or harsh. 

The need of knowing and of explaining, well or 



CONCLUSION. 315 

ill, has created myths, religions, philosophical sys- 
tems, scientific hypotheses. 

Every want, tendency or desire may, then, be- 
come creative, by itself or associated with others, 
and into these final elements it is that analysis 
must resolve "creative spontaneity.'' This vague ex- 
pression corresponds to a sum, not to a special prop- 
erty.^ Every invention, then, has a motor origin; 
the ultimate basis of the constructive imagination is 
motor, 

2. But needs and desires by themselves cannot 
create — they are only a stimulus and a spring. 
Whence arises the need of a second condition — the 
spontaneous revival of images. 

In many animals that are endowed only with 
memory the return of images is always provoked. 
Sensation from without or from within bring them 

*It is a postulate of contemporary physiology that all the 
neurones taken together cannot spontaneously, that is, of them- 
selves, give rise to any movement — they receive from without, 
and expend their energy outwards. Nevertheless, between the 
two moments that, in reflex and instinctive actions, seem con- 
tinuous, a third interposes, which, for the higher psychic acts, 
may be of long duration. Thus, reasonings in logical form and 
reflection regarding a decision to be made have a feeble ten- 
dency to become changed into acts; their motor effects are 
indirect, and at a long range. But this intermediate moment 
is par excellence the moment for psychology. It is also the 
moment of the personal equation: every man receives, trans- 
forms, and restores outwards according to his ovra organiza- 
tion, temperament, idiosyncrasies, character — in a word, ac- 
cording to his personality, of which needs, tendencies, desires, 
are the direct and immediate expression. So we come back, by 
another route, to the same definition of spontaneity. 



3l6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

into consciousness under the form, pure and sim- 
ple, of former experience; whence we have repro- 
duction, repetition without new associations. Peo- 
ple of slight imagination and used to routine ap- 
proach this mental condition. But, as a matter of 
fact, man from his second year on, and some higher 
animals, go beyond this stage — they are capable of 
spontaneous revival. By this term I mean that re- 
vival that comes about abruptly, without apparent 
antecedents. We know that these act in a latent 
form, and consist of thinking by analogy, affective 
dispositions, unconscious elaboration. This sudden 
appearance excites other states which, grouped into 
new associations, contain the first elements of the 
creative act. 

Taken altogether, and however numerous its 
manifestations, the constructive imagination seems 
to me reducible to three forms, which I shall call 
sketched, fixed, objectified, according as it remains 
an internal fancy, or takes on a material but con- 
tingent and unstable form, or is subjected to the 
conditions of a rigorous internal or external deter- 
minism. 

(a) The sketched form is primordial, original, 
the simplest of all; it is a nascent moment or first 
attempt. It appears first of all in dreaming — an 
embryonic, unstable and uncoordinated manifesta- 
tion of the creative imagination — a transition-stage 
between passive reproduction and organized con- 
struction. A step higher is revery, whose flitting 
images, associated by chance, without personal in- 



CONCLUSION. 317 

tervention, are nevertheless vivid enough to exclude 
from consciousness every impression of the external 
world — so much so that the day-dreamer re-enters 
it only with a shock of surprise. More coherent are 
the imaginary constructions known as "castles in 
Spain" — the works of a wish considered unrealiz- 
able, fancies of love, ambition, power and wealth, 
the goal of which seems to be forever beyond our 
reach. Lastly, still higher, come all the plans for 
the future conceived vaguely and as barely possi- 
ble — foreseeing the end of a sickness, of a business 
enterprise, of a political event, etc. 

This vague and ^'outline" imagination, penetrat- 
ing our entire life, has its peculiar characters — the 
unifying principle is nil or ephemeral, which fact al- 
ways reduces it to the dream as a type ; it does not 
externalize itself, does not change into acts, a con- 
sequence of its basically chimerical nature or of 
weakness of will, which reduces it to a strictly in- 
ternal and individual existence. It is needless to say 
that this kind of imagination is a permanent and 
definite form with the dreamers living in a world of 
ceaselessly reappearing images, having no power to 
organize them, to change them into a work of art, 
a theory, or a useful invention. 

The "sketched" form is or remains an elementary, 
primitive, automatic form. Conformably to the gen- 
eral law ruling the development of mind — passage 
from indefinite to definite, from the incoherent to 
the coherent, from spontaneity to reflection, from 
the reflex to the voluntary period — the imagination 



3l8 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

comes out of its swaddling-clothes, is changed — 
through the intervention of a teleological act that 
assigns it an end ; through the union of rational ele- 
ments that subdue it for an adaptation. Then ap- 
pear the other two forms. 

(b) The fixed form comprises mythic and esthetic 
creations, philosophical and scientific hypotheses. 
While the "outline" imagination remains an internal 
phenomenon, existing only in and for a single indi- 
vidual, the fixed form is projected outwards, made 
something else. The former has no reality other 
than the momentary belief accompanying it ; the lat- 
ter exists by itself, for its creator and for others; 
the work is accepted, rejected, examined, criticised. 
Fiction rests on the same level as reality. Do not 
people discuss seriously the objective value of certain 
myths, and of metaphysical theories ? the action of a 
novel or drama as though it were a matter of real 
events? the character of the dramatis personae as 
though they were living flesh and blood ? 

The fixed imagination moves in an elastic frame. 
The material elements circumscribing it and com- 
posing it have a certain fluidity; they are language, 
writing, musical sounds, colors, forms, lines. Fur- 
thermore, we know that its creations, in spite of the 
spontaneous adherence of the mind accepting them, 
are the work of a free will; they could have been 
otherwise — they preserve an indelible imprint of 
contingency and subjectivity. 

(c) This last mark is rubbed out without disap- 
pearing (for a thing imagined is always a personal 



CONCLUSION. 319 

thing) in the objectified form that comprises suc- 
cessful practical inventions — whether mechanical, in- 
dustrial, commercial, military, social, or political. 
These have no longer an arbitrary, borrowed real- 
ity ; they have their place in the totality of physical 
and social phenomena. They resemble creations of 
nature, subject like them to fixed conditions of 
existence and to a limited determinism. We shall 
not dwell longer on this last character, so often 
pointed out. 

In order the better to comprehend the distinction 
between the three forms of imagination let us 
borrow for a moment the terminology of spiritual- 
ism or of the common dualism — merely as a means 
of explaining the matter clearly. The "outline" 
imagination is a soul without a body, a pure 
spirit, without determination in space. The "fixed" 
imagination is a soul or spirit surrounded by an 
almost immaterial sheath, like angels or demons, 
genii, shadows, the "double" or savages, the pere- 
sprit of spiritualists, etc. The ohjectiHed imagina- 
tion is soul and body, a complete organization after 
the pattern of living people ; the ideal is incarnated, 
but it must undergo transformation, reductions and 
adaptations, in order that it may become practical — 
just as the soul, according to spiritualism, must bend 
to the necessities of the body, to be at the same time 
the servant of, and served by, the bodily organs. 

According to general opinion the great imaginers 
are found only in the first two classes, which is, 
in the strict sense of the word, true; in the full 



320 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

sense of the word false. As long as it remains "out- 
line," or even "fixed," the constructive imagination 
can reign as supreme mistress. Objectified, it still 
rules, but shares its power with competitors; it 
avails nought without them, they can do nothing 
without it. What deceives us is the fact that we see 
it no longer in the open. Here the imaginative 
stroke resembles those powerful streams of water 
that must be imprisoned in a complicated network 
of canals and ramifications varying in shape and 
in diameter before bursting forth in multiple jets 
and in liquid architecture.^ 

II 

The Imaginative Type. 

Let us try now, by way of conclusion, to present 
to the reader a picture of the whole of the imagina- 
tive life in all its degrees. 

If we consider the human mind principally under 
its intellectual aspect — i. e., insofar as it knows and 
thinks, deducting its emotions and voluntary activ- 
ity — the observation of individuals distinguishes 
some very clear varieties of mentality. 

First, those of a "positive" or realistic turn of 
mind, living chiefly on the external world, on what 

* Besides these three principal forms, there are intermediate 
forms, transitions from one category to another, that are hard 
to classify: certain mythic creations are half -sketched, half- 
fixed ; and we find religious and social and political conceptions, 
partly theoretic or fixed, partly practical or objective. 



CONCLUSION. 321 

is perceived and what is immediately deducible 
therefrom — alien or inimical to vain fancy ; some of 
them flat, limited, of the earth earthy; others, men 
of action, energetic but limited by real things. 

Second, abstract minds, "quintescence abstractors," 
with whom the internal life is dominant in the form 
of combinations of concepts. They have a schematic 
representation of the world, reduced to a hierarchy 
of general ideas, noted by symbols. Such are the 
pure mathematicians, the pure metaphysicians. If 
these two tendencies exist together, or, as happens, 
are grafted one on the other, without anything to 
counterbalance them, the abstract spirit attains its 
perfect form. 

Midway between these tw^o groups are the imag- 
iners in whom the internal life predominates in the 
form of combinations of images, which fact distin- 
guishes them clearly from the abstractors. The 
former alone interest us, and we shall try to trace 
this imaginative type in its development from the 
normal or average stage to the moment when ever- 
growing exuberance leads us into pathology. 

The explanation of the various phases of this de- 
velopment is reducible to a well-known psychologic 
law — the natural antagonism between sensation and 
image, between phenomena of peripheral origin and 
phenomena of central origin; or, in a more general 
form, between the outer and inner life. I shall not 
dwell long on this point, which Taine has so admir- 
ably treated/ He has shown in detail how the 

* Taine, On Intelligence, Part I, Book II, ch. I. 



322 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

image is a spontaneously arising sensation, one that 
is, however, aborted by the opposing shock of real 
sensation, which is its reducer, producing on it an 
arresting action and maintaining it in the condition 
of an internal, subjective fact. Thus, during the 
waking hours, the frequency and intensity of impres- 
sions from without press the images back to the 
second level; but during sleep, when the external 
world is as it were suppressed, their hallucinatory 
tendency is no longer kept in check, and the world 
of dreams is momentarily the reality. 

The psychology of the imaginer reduces itself to 
a progressively increasing interchange of roles. 
Images become stronger and stronger states; per- 
ceptions, more and more feeble. In this movement 
opposite to nature I note four steps, each of which 
corresponds to particular conditions : ( i ) The quan- 
tity of images; (2) quantity and intensity; (3) 
quantity, intensity and duration; (4) complete sys- 
tematization. 

( I ) In the first place the predominance of imagi- 
nation is marked only by the quantity of representa- 
tions invading consciousness; they teem, break 
apart, become associated, combine easily and in vari- 
ous ways. All the imaginative persons who have 
given us their experiences either orally or in writing 
agree in regard to the extreme ease of the forma- 
tion of associations, not in repeating past experi- 
ience, but in sketching little romances.^ From 
among many examples I choose one. One of my 

* See Appendix E. 



CONCLUSION. 323 

correspondents writes that if at church, theatre, on 
a street, or in a railway station, his attention is at- 
tracted to a person — man or woman — he immediate- 
ly makes up, from the appearance, carriage and at- 
tractiveness his or her present or past, manner of 
life, occupation — representing to himself the part of 
the city he or she must dwell in, the apartments, 
furniture, etc. — a construction most often erroneous ; 
I have many proofs of it. Surely this disposition 
is normal; it departs from the average only by an 
excess of imagination that is replaced in others by 
an excessive tendency to observe, to analyze, or to 
criticise, reason, find fault. In order to take the 
decisive step and become abnormal one condition 
more is necessary — intensity of the representations. 
2. Next, the interchange of place, indicated 
above, occurs. Weak states (images) become 
strong; strong states T perceptions) become weak. 
The impressions from without are powerless to ful- 
fill their regular function of inhibition. We find 
the simplest example of this state in the exceptional 
persistence of certain dreams. Ordinarily, our noc- 
turnal imaginings vanish as empty phantasmagorias 
at the inrush of the perceptions and habits of daily 
life — they seem like faraway phantoms, without ob- 
jective value. But, in the struggle occurring, on 
waking, between images and perceptions, the latter 
are not always victorious. There are dreams — i. e., 
imaginary creations — that remain firm in face of 
reality, and for some time go along parallel with it. 
Taine was perhaps the first to see the importance 



324 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

of this fact. He reports that his relative, Dr. Bail- 
larger, having dreamt that one of his friends had 
been appointed editor of a journal, announced the 
news seriously to several persons, and doubt arose 
in his mind only toward the end of the afternoon. 
Since then contemporary psychologists have gath- 
ered various observations of this kind.^ The emo- 
tional persistence of certain dreams is known. So- 
and-so, one of our neighbors, plays in a dream an 
odious role; we may have a feeling of repulsion or 
spite toward him persisting throughout the day. 
But this triumph of the image, accidental and 
ephemeral in normal man, is frequent and stable 
in the imaginers of the second class. Many among 
them have asserted that this internal world is the 
only reality. Gerard de Nerval "had very early the 
conviction that the majority is mistaken, that the 
material universe in which it believes, because its 
eyes see it and its hands touch it, is nothing but 
phantoms and appearances. For him the invisible 
world, on the contrary, was the only one not chi- 
merical." Likewise, Edgar Allan Pbe: "The real 
things of the world would affect me like visions, and 
only so; while the wild ideas of the land of dreams 
became in turn not only the feeding ground of my 
daily existence but positively the sole and entire 
existence itself." Others describe their life as "a 

* Sante de Santis, I Sogni, chapter X ; Dr. Tissig, Les Beves, 
esp. p. 165, the case of a merchant who dreams of having paid 
a certain debt, and several weeks afterward meets his creditor, 
and maintains that they are even, giving way only to proof. 



CONCLUSION. 325 

permanent dream." We could multiply examples. 
Aside from the poets and artists, the mystics would 
furnish copious examples. Let us take an exagger- 
ated instance: This permanent dream is, indeed, 
only a part of their existence; it is above all active 
through its intensity; but, while it lasts, it absorbs 
them so completely that they enter the external 
world only with a sudden, violent and painful shock. 

(3) If the changing of images into strong states 
preponderating in consciousness is no longer an 
episode but a lasting disposition, then the imagina- 
tive life undergoes a partial systematization that 
approaches insanity. Everyone may be "absorbed" 
for a moment; the above-mentioned authors are so 
frequently. On a higher level this invading suprem- 
acy of the internal life becomes a habit. This third 
degree is but the second carried to excess. 

Some cases of double personality (those of Azam, 
Reynolds) are known in which the second state is at 
first embryonic and of short duration; then its 
appearances are repeated, its sphere becomes ex- 
tended. Little by little it engrosses the greater part 
of life ; it may even entirely supplant the earlier self. 
The growing working of the imagination is similar 
to this. Thanks to two causes acting in unison, 
temperament and habit, the imaginative and internal 
life tends to become systematized and to encroach 
more and more on the real, external life. In an 
account by Fere^ one may follow step by step this 

' For the complete account, see his Pathologic des emotions, 
pp. 345-49. (Paris, F. Alcan.) 



326 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

work of systematization which we abridge here to 
its chief characteristics. 

The subject, M , a man thirty-seven years 

old, had from childhood a decided taste for solitude. 
Seated in an out-of-the-way corner of the house or 
out of doors, *'he commenced from that time on to 
build castles in Spain that little by little took on a 
considerable importance in his life. His construc- 
tions were at first ephemeral, replaced every day by 
new ones. They became progressively more con- 
sistent. . . . When he had well entered into 
his imaginary role, he often succeeded in continuing 
his musing in the presence of other people. At 
college, whole hours would be spent in this way; 
often he would see and hear nothing." Married, the 
head of a prosperous business house, he had some 
respite; then he returned to his former construc- 
tions. "They commenced by being, as before, not 
very durable or absorbing; but gradually they 
acquired more intensity and duration, and lastly 
became fixed in a definite form." 

"To sum up, here is what this ideal life, lasting 

almost from his fourth year, meant : M had 

built at Chaville, on the outskirts of the forest, an 
imaginary summer residence surrounded by a gar- 
den. By successive additions the pavilion became 
a chateau; the garden, a park; servants, horses, 
water-fixtures came to ornament the domain. The 
furnishings of the inside had been modified at the 
same time. A wife had come to give life to the 
picture ; two children had been born. Nothing was 



CONCLUSION. 327 

wanting to this household, only the being true. 
. . . One day he was in his imaginary salon at 
Chaville, occupied in watching an upholsterer who 
was changing the arrangement of the tapestry. He 
was so absorbed in the matter that he did not notice 
a man coming toward him, and at the question, 

*M , if you please — ?' he answered, without 

thinking, *He is at Chaville.' This reply, given in 
public, aroused in him a real terror. 'I believe that 
I was foolish,' he said. Coming to himself, he 
declared that he was ready to do anything to get rid 
of his ideas.'* 

Here the imaginative type is at its maximum, at 
the brink of insanity without being over it. Asso- 
ciations and combinations of images form the entire 
content of consciousness, which remains impervious 
to impressions from without. Its world becomes 
the world. The parasitic life undermines and cor- 
rodes the other in order to become established in its 
place — it grows, its parts adhere more closely, it 
forms a compact mass — the imaginary systematiza- 
tion is complete. 

(4) The fourth stage is an exaggeration of the 
foregoing. The completely systematized and per- 
manent imaginative life excludes the other. This is 
the extreme form, the beginning of insanity, which 
is outside our subject, from which pathology has 
been excluded. 

Imagination in the insane would deserve a special 
study, that would be lengthy, because there is no 
form of imagination that insanity has not adopted. 



328 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

In no period have insane creations been lacking in 
the practical, religious, or mystic life, in poetry, the 
fine arts, and in the sciences; in industrial, com- 
mercial, mechanical, military projects, and in plans 
for social and political reform. We should, then, 
be abundantly supplied v^ith facts.^ 

It would be difficult, for, if in ordinary life v^e 
are often perplexed to decide whether a man is sane 
or not, how much more then, when it is a question 
of an inventor, of an act of the creative faculty, 
i. e., of a venture into the unknown! How many 
innovators have been regarded as insane, or as at 

*Dr. Max Simon, in an article on "Imagination in Insan- 
ity'' (Annates m^dico-psychologiques, December, 1876), holds 
that every kind of mental disease has its own form of imagina- 
tion that expresses itself in stories, compositions, sketches, 
decorations, dress, and symbolic attributes. The maniac in- 
vents complicated and improbable designs; the persecuted, 
symbolic designs, strange writings, bordering on the horrible; 
megalomaniacs look for the effect of everything they say and 
do; the general paralytic lives in grandeur and attributes 
capital importance to everything; lunatics love the naive and 
childishly wonderful. 

There are also great imaginers who, having passed through 
a period of insanity, have strongly regretted it **as a state 
in which the soul, more exalted and more refined, perceives 
invisible relations and enjoys spectacles that escape the material 
eyes." Such was Gerard de Nerval. As for Charles Lamb, he 
would assert that he should be envied the days spent in an 
insane asylum. * ' Sometimes, ' ' he said in a letter to Coleridge, 
"I cast a longing glance backwards to the condition in which 
I found myself; for while it lasted I had many hours of pure 
happiness. Do not believe, Coleridge, that you have, tasted the 
grandeur and all the transport of fancy if you have not been 
insane. Everything seems to me now insipid in comparison." 
Quoted by A. Barine, Nivroses, p. 326. 



CONCLUSION. 329 

least unbalanced, visionary ! We cannot even invoke 
success as a criterion. Many non-viable or abortive 
inventions have been fathered by very sane minds, 
and people regarded as insane have vindicated their 
imaginative constructions through success. 

Let us leave these difficulties of a subject that is 
not our ov^n, in order to determine merely the 
psychological criterion belonging to the fourth stage. 

How may we rightly assert that a form of 
imaginative life is clearly pathologic? In my opin- 
ion, the answer must be sought in the nature and 
degree of belief accompanying the labor of creating. 
It is an axiom unchallenged by anyone — whether 
idealist or realist of any shad^ of belief — that noth- 
ing has existence for us save through the coftscious- 
ness we have of it; but for realism — and experi- 
mental psychology is of necessity realistic — there are 
two distinct forms of existence. 

One, subjective, having no reality except in con- 
sciousness, for the one experiencing it, its reality 
being due only to belief, to that first affirmation of 
the mind so often described. 

The other, objective, existing in consciousness 
and outside of it, being real not only for me but 
for all those whose constitution is similar or analo- 
gous to mine. 

This much borne in mind, let us compare the last 
two degrees of the development of the imaginative 
life. 

For the imaginer of the third staged the two forms 
of existence are not confounded. He distinguishes 



330 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

two worlds, preferring one and making the best of 
the other, but believing in both. He is conscious 
of passing from one to the other. There is an 
alternation. The observation of Fere, although 
extreme, is a proof of this. 

At the fourth stage, in the insane, imaginative 
labor — the only kind with which we are concerned 
— is so systematized that the distinction between 
the two kinds of existence has disappeared. All the 
phantoms of his brain are invested with objective 
reality. Occurrences without, even the most extra- 
ordinary, do not reach one in this stage, or else are 
interpreted in accordance with the diseased fancy. 
There is no longer any alternation.^ 

By way of summary we may say: The creative 
imagination consists of the property that images 
have of gathering in new combinations, through the 
effect of a spontaneity whose nature we have at- 
tempted to describe. It always tends to realize itself 
in degrees that vary from mere momentary belief 
to complete objectivity. Throughout, its multiple 
manifestations, it remains identical with itself in its 
basic nature, in its constitutive elements. The 
diversity of its deeds depends on the end desired, 
the conditions required for its attainment, materials 
employed which, as we have seen, under the col- 

* There has often been cited the instance of certain maniacs 
at Charenton, who, during the Franco -Prussian War, despite 
the stories that were told them, the papers that they read, and 
the shells bursting under the walls of the asylum, maintained 
that the war was only imagined, and that all was only a con- 
trivance of their persecutors. 



CONCLUSION. 331 

lective name "representations'* are very unlike one 
another, not only as regards their sensuous origin 
(visual, auditory, tactile, etc.) but also as regards 
their psychologic nature (concrete, symbolic, affec- 
tive, emotional-abstract images; generic and sche- 
matic images, concepts — each group itself having 
shades or degrees). 

This constructive activity, applying itself to every- 
thing and radiating in all directions, is in its early, 
typical form a mythic creation. It is an invincible 
need of man to reflect and reproduce his own nature 
in the world surrounding him. The first application 
of his mind is thinking by analogy, which vivifies 
everything after the human model and attempts to 
know everything according to arbitrary resem- 
blances. Myth-making activity, which we have 
studied in the child and in primitive man, is the 
embryonic form whence arise by a slow evolution 
religious creations — gross or refined; esthetic de- 
velopment, which is a fallen, impoverished mythol- 
ogy ; the fantastic conceptions of the world that may 
little by little become scientific conceptions, with, 
however, an irreducible residuum of hypotheses. 
Alongside of these creations, all bordering upon 
what we have called the fixed form, there are prac- 
tical, objective creations. As for the latter, we 
could not trace them to the same mythic source 
except by dialectic subtleties which we renounce. 
The former arise from an internal efflorescence ; the 
latter from urgent life-needs; they appear later and 



332 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

are a bifurcation of the early trunk : but the same 
sap flows in both branches. 

The constructive imagination penetrates every 
part of our Hfe, whether individual or collective, 
speculative and practical, in all its forms — it is 

EVERYWHERE. 



i 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A 

The Various Forms of Inspiration^ 

Among the descriptions of the inspired state 
found in various authors, I select only three, which 
are brief and have each a special character. 

I. Mystic inspiration, in a passive form, in 
Jacob Boehme (Aurora) : "I declare before God 
that I do not myself knov^ how the thing arises 
within me, without the participation of my will. I 
do not even know that which I must write. If I 
write, it is because the Spirit moves me and com- 
municates to me a great, wonderful knowledge. 
Often I do not even know whether I dwell in spirit 
in this present world and whether it is I myself that 
have the fortune to possess a certain and solid 
knowledge." 

II. Feverish and painful inspiration in Alfred 
de Musset: "Invention annoys me and makes me 
tremble. Execution, always too slow for my wish, 
makes my heart beat awfully, and weeping, and 
keeping myself from crying aloud, I am delivered 
of an idea that is intoxicating me, but of which I 

* See Part One, chapter III. 



S;^6 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

am mortally ashamed and disgusted next morning. 
If I change it, it is worse, it deserts me — it is much 
better to forget it and wait for another; but this 
other comes to me so confused and misshapen that 
my poor being cannot contain it. It presses and 
tortures me, until it has taken realizable propor 
tions, when comes the other pain, of bringing forth, 
a truly physical suffering that I cannot define. And 
that is how my life is spent when I let myself be 
dominated by this artistic monster in me. It is 
much better, then, that I should live as I have 
imagined living, that I go to all kinds of excess, and 
that I kill this never-dying worm that people like 
me modestly term their inspiration, but which I 
call, plainly, my weakness."^ 

III. The poet Grillparzer^ analvzes the condition, 
thus: 

"Inspiration, properly so called, is the concentra- 
tion of all the faculties and aptitudes on a single 
point which, for the moment, should include the 
rest of the world less than represent it. The 
strengthening of the state of the soul comes from 
the fact that its various faculties, instead of being 
disseminated over the whole world, find themselves 
contained within the limits of a single object, touch 
one another, reciprocally upholding, reenforcing, 
completing themselves. Thanks to this isolation, 
the object emerges out of the average level of its 

• George Sand, Elle et Lui, I. 

* In Oelzelt-Newin, op, cit., p. 49. 



APPENDICES. 337 

milieu, is illumined all around and put in relief — it 
takes body, moves, lives. But to attain this is neces- 
sary the concentration of all the faculties. It is only 
when the art-work has been a world for the artist 
that it is also a world for others." 



APPENDIX B 
On the Nature of the Unconscious Factor 

We have seen that in the question of the uncon- 
scious there must be recognized a positive part — 
facts, and an hypothetical part — theories. 

Insofar as the facts are concerned, it would be 
w^ell, I think, to establish two categories — (i) static 
unconscious, comprising habits, memory, and, in 
general, all that is organized knowledge. It is a 
state of preservation, of rest; very relatively, since 
representations suffer incessant corrosion and 
change. (2) Dynamic unconscious, which is a 
state of latent activity, of elaboration and incuba- 
tion. We might give a multitude of proofs of this 
unconscious rumination. The well-known fact that 
an intellectual work gains by being interrupted; 
that in resuming it one often finds it cleared up, 
changed, even accomplished, was explained by some 
psychologists prior to Carpenter by "the resting of 
the mind." It would be just as valid to say that a 
traveler covers leagues by lying abed. The author 

See Part I, Chapter III. 



APPENDICES. 339 

just mentioned^ has brought together many observa- 
tions in which the solution of a mathematical, 
mechanical, commercial problem appeared suddenly 
after hours and days of vague, undefinable uneasi- 
ness, the cause of which is unknown, which, how- 
ever, is only the result of an underlying cerebral 
working; for the trouble, sometimes rising to 
anguish, ceases as soon as the unawaited conclusion 
has entered consciousness. The men who think the 
most are not those who have the clearest and "most 
conscious" ideas, but those having at their disposal 
a rich fund of unconscious elaboration. On the 
other hand, shallow minds have a naturally poor 
unconscious fund, capable of but slight development ; 
they give out immediately and rapidly all that they 
are able to give ; they have no reserve. It is useless 
to allow them time for reflection or invention. They 
will not do better; they may do worse. 

As to the nature of the unconscious working, we 
find disagreement and darkness. One may doubtless 
maintain, theoretically, that in the inventor every- 
thing goes on in subconsciousness and in uncon- 
sciousness, just as in consciousness itself, with the 
exception that a message does not arrive as far as 
the self; that the labor that may be followed, in 
clear consciousness, in its progress and retreats, 
remains the same when it continues unknown to us. 
This is possible. Yet it must at least be recognized 
that consciousness is rigorously subject to the con- 

* Mental Physiology, Book II, chapter 13. 



340 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

dition of time, the unconscious is not. This dif- 
ference, not to mention others, is not negHgible, and 
could well arouse other problems. 

The contemporary theories regarding the nature 
of the unconscious seem to me reducible to two 
principal positions — one psychological, the other 
physiological. 

I. The physiological theory is simple and 
scarcely permits any variations. According to it, 
unconscious activity is simply cerebral; it is an 
"unconscious cerebration." The psychic factor, 
which ordinarily accompanies the activity of the 
nervous centers, is absent. Although I incline 
toward this hypothesis, I confess that it is full of 
difficulties. 

It has been proven through numerous experiments 
(Fere, Binet, Mosso, Janet, Newbold, etc.) that 
"unconscious sensations"^ act, since they produce 
the same reactions as conscious sensations, and 
Mosso has been able to maintain that "the testimony 
of consciousness is less certain than that of the 
sphygmograph." But the particular instance of 
invention is very different; for it does not merely 
suppose the adaptation to an end which the physio- 
logical factor would suffice to explain; it implies a 
series of adaptations, corrections, rational opera- 

* This expression is put in quotation marks because in Amer- 
ican and English usage ** sensation" is defined in terms of 
consciousness, and such an expression as "unconscious sensa- 
tion'' is paradoxical, and would lead to futile discussion. (Tr.) 



APPENDICES. 341 

tions, of which nervous activity alone furnishes us 
no example/ 

2. The psychological theory is based on an 
equivocal use of the word consciousness. Con- 
sciousness has one definite mark — it is an internal 
event existing, not by itself, but for me and insofar 
as it is known by me. But the psychological theory 
of the unconscious assumes that if we descend from 
clear consciousness progressively to obscure con- 
sciousness, to the subconscious, to the unconscious 
that manifests itself only through its motor reac- 
tions, the first state thus successively impoverished, 
still remains, down to its final term, identical in its 
basis with consciousness. It is an hypothesis that 
nothing justifies. 

No difiiculty arises when we bear in mind the 
legitimate distinction between consciousness of self 
and consciousness in general, the former entirely 
subjective, the latter in a way objective (the con- 
sciousness of a man captivated by an attractive 
scene; better yet, the fluid form of revery or of the 
awaking from syncope). We may admit that this 

^ For the detailed criticism of unconscious cerebration, see 
Boris Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion: A research into 
the subconscious nature of Man and Society, New York, Apple- 
tons, 1898, pp. 121-127. The author, who assumes the coexist- 
ence of two selves — one waking, the other subwaking, and who 
attributes to the latter all weakness and vice (according to him 
the unconscious is incapable of rising above mere association 
by contiguity; it is "stupid," "uncritical," "credulous," 
"brutal," etc.) would be greatly puzzled to explain its rOle in 
creative activity. 



342 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

evanescent consciousness, affective in nature, felt 
rather than perceived, is due to a lack of synthesis, 
of relations among the internal states, which remain 
isolated, unable to unite into a whole. 

The difficulty commences when we descend into 
the region of the subconscious, which allows stages 
whose obscurity increases in proportion as we move 
away from clear consciousness, "like a lake in which 
the action of light is always nearing extinction" (in 
double coexisting personalities, automatic writing, 
mediums, etc.). Here some postulate two currents 
of consciousness existing at the same time in one 
person without reciprocal connection. Others sup- 
pose a ''field of consciousness" with a brilliant center 
and extending indefinitely toward the dim distance. 
Still others liken the phenomenon to the movement 
of waves, whose summit alone is lighted up. In- 
deed, the authors declare that with these compari- 
sons and metaphors they make no pretense of 
explaining; but certainly they all reduce uncon- 
sciousness to consciousness, as a special to a general 
case, and what is that if not explaining? 

I do not intend to enumerate all the varieties of 
the psychological theory. The most systematic, that 
of Myers, accepted by Delboef and others, is full of 
a biological mysticism all its own. Here it is in 
substance: In every one of us there is a conscious 
self adapted to the needs of life, and potential selves 
constituting the subliminal consciousness. The lat- 
ter, much broader in scope than personal conscious- 
ness, has dependent on it the entire vegetative life — 



APPENDICES. 343 

circulation, trophic actions, etc. Ordinarily the con- 
scious self is on the highest level, the subliminal 
consciousness on the second; but in certain extra- 
ordinary states (hypnosis, hysteria, divided con- 
sciousness, etc.) it is just the reverse. Here is the 
bold part of the hypothesis : Its authors suppose 
that the supremacy of the subliminal consciousness 
is a reversion, a return to the ancestral. In the 
higher animals and in primitive man, according to 
them, all trophic actions entered consciousness and 
were regulated by it. In the course of evolution this 
became organized; the higher consciousness has 
delegated to the subliminal consciousness the care 
of silently governing the vegetative life. But in 
case of mental disintegration there occurs a return 
to the primitive state. In this manner they explain 
burns through suggestion, stigmata, trophic changes 
of a miraculous appearance, etc. It is needless to 
dwell on this conception of the unconscious. It has 
been vehemently criticised, notably by Bramwell, 
who remarks that if certain faculties could little by 
little fall into the domain of subliminal conscious- 
ness because they were no longer necessary for the 
struggle for life, there are nevertheless faculties so 
essential to the well-being of the individual that we 
ask ourselves how they have been able to escape 
from the control of the will. If, for example, some 
lower type had the power of arresting pain, how 
could it lose it ? 

At the foundation of the psychological theory in 
all its forms is the unexpressed hypothesis that 



344 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

consciousness may be likened to a quantity that 
forever decreases without reaching zero. This is a 
postulate that nothing justifies. The experiments 
of psychophysicists, without solving the question, 
would support rather the opposite view. We know 
that the ''threshold of consciousness" or minimum 
perceptible quantity, appears and disappears sud- 
denly ; the excitation is not felt under a determinate 
limit. Likewise in regard to the "summit of per- 
ception" or maximum perceptible, any increase of 
excitation is no longer felt if above a determinate 
limit. Moreover, in order that an increase or 
diminution be felt between these two extreme limits, 
it is necessary that both have a constant relation — 
differential threshold — as is expressed in Weber's 
law. All these facts, and others that I omit, are not 
favorable to the thesis of growing or diminishing 
continuity of consciousness. It has even been main- 
tained that consciousness ''has an aversion for con- 
tinuity." 

To sum up : The two rival theories are equally 
unable to penetrate into the inner nature of the 
unconscious factor. We have thus had to limit 
ourselves to taking it as a fact of experience and to 
assign it its place in the complex function that 
produces invention. 

The observations of Flournoy (in his book, men- 
tioned above, Part I, chapter III) have a particular 
interest in relation to our subject. His medium, 
Helene S — very unlike others, who are satis- 
fied with forecasts of the future, disclosures of 



APPENDICES. 345 

unknown past events, counsel, prognosis, evocation, 
etc., without creating anything, in the proper sense 
— is the author of three or four novels, one of 
which, at least, is invented out of whole cloth — 
revelations in regard to the planet Mars, its coun- 
tries, inhabitants, dwellings, etc. Although the 
descriptions and pictures of Helene S. are found 
on comparison to be borrowed from our terrestrial 
globe, and transposed and changed, as Flournoy has 
well shown, it is certain that in this **Martian 
novel," to say nothing of the others, there is a 
richness of invention that is rare among mediums : 
the creative imagination in its subliminal (uncon- 
scious) form encloses the other in its eclat. We 
know how much the cases of mediums teach us in 
regard to the unconscious life of the mind. Here 
we are permitted, as an exceptional case, to pene- 
trate into the dark laboratory of romantic invention, 
and we can appreciate the importance of the labor 
that is going on there. 



APPENDIX C 
Cosmic and Human Imagination* 

For Froschammer, Fancy is the original prin- 
ciple of things. In his philosophical theory it plays 
the same part as Hegel's Idea, Schopenhauer's Will, 
Hartmann's Unconscious, etc. It is, at first, objec- 
tive — in the beginning the universal creative power 
is immanent in things, just as there is contained in 
the kernel the principle that shall give the plant its 
form and construct its organism ; it spreads out into 
the myriads of vegetable and animal existences that 
have been succeeded or that still live on the surface 
of the Cosmos. The first organized beings must 
have been very simple; but little by little the objec- 
tive imagination increases its energy by exercising 
it ; it invents and realizes increasingly more complex 
images that attest the progress of its artistic genius. 
So Darwin was right in asserting that a slow evolu- 
tion raises up organized beings towards fulness of 
life and beauty of form. 

Step by step, it succeeds in becoming conscious 
of itself in the mind of man — it becomes subjective. 

*See above, Part One, Chapter IV. 



APPENDICES. 347 

Generative power, at first diffused throughout the 
organism, becomes localized in the generative 
organs, and becomes established in sex. "The brain, 
in living beings, may form a pole opposed to the 
reproductive organs, especially when these beings 
are very high in the organic scale." Thus changed, 
the generative power has become capable of perceiv- 
ing new relations, of bringing forth internal worlds. 
In nature and in man it is the same principle that 
causes living forms to appear — objective images in a 
way, and subjective images, a kind of living forms 
that arise and die in the mind.^ 

This metaphysical theory, one of the many varie- 
ties of mens agitat molem, being, like every other, a 
personal conception, it is superfluous to discuss or 
criticise its evident anthropomorphism. But, since 
we are dealing with hypotheses, I venture to risk a 
comparison between embryological development in 
physiology, instinct in psychophysiology, and the 
creative imagination in psychology. These three 
phenomena are creations, i. e., a disposition of cer- 
tain materials following a determinate type. 

In the first case, the ovum after fertilization is 
subject to a rigorously determined evolution whence 
arises such and such an individual with its specific 
and personal characters, its hereditary influences, 

'Those who, not having the courage to read the 575 pages 
of Froschammer 's book, want more details, may profitably con- 
sult the excellent analysis that S^ailles has given (Eev. Philos., 
March, 1878, pp. 198-220). See also Ambrosi, Psicologia dell* 
immaginazione nella storia delta filosofia, pp. 472-498. 



34^ THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

etc. Every disturbing factor in this evolution pro- 
duces deviations, monstrosities, and the creation 
does not attain the normal. Embryology can follow 
these changes step by step. There remains one 
obscure point in any event, and that is, the nature 
of what the ancients called the itisiis formativus. 

In the case of instinct, the initial moment is an 
external or internal sensation, or rather, a represen- 
tation — the image of a nest to be built, in the case 
of the bird ; of a tunnel to be dug, for the ant ; of a 
comb to be made, for the bee and the wasp; of a 
web to be spun, for the spider, etc. This initial 
state puts into action a mechanism determined by the 
nature of each species, and ends in creations of 
special kinds. However, variations of instinct, its 
adaptation to various conditions, show that the con- 
ditions of the determinism are less simple, that the 
creative activity is endowed with a certain plasticity. 

In the third case, creative imagination, the ideal, 
a sketched construction, is the quivalent of the 
ovum; but it is evident that the plasticity of the 
creative imagination is much greater than that of 
instinct. The imagination may radiate in several 
very different ways, and the plan of the invention, 
as we have seen,^ may arise as a whole and develop 
regularly in an embryological manner, or else pre- 
sent itself in a fragmentary, partial form that be- 
comes complete after a series of attractions. 

Perhaps an identical process, forming three 

* See above, Part II, chapter IV. 



APPENDICES. 349 

stages — a lower, middle, and higher — is at the root 
of all three cases. But this is only a speculative 
hypothesis, foreign to psychology proper. 



APPENDIX D 
Evidence in Regard to Musical Imagination^ 

The question asked above,^ Does the experiencing 
of purely musical sounds evoke images, universally, 
and of what nature and under what conditions? 
seemed to me to enter a more general field — the 
affective imagination — which I intend to study else- 
where in a special work. For the time being I limit 
myself to observations and information that I have 
gathered, picking from them several that I give here 
for the sake of shedding light on the question. I 
give first the replies of musicians; then, those of 
non-musicians. 

I. M. Lionel Dauriac writes me : "The question 
that you ask me is complex. I am not a Visual- 
izer;' I have infrequent hypnagogic hallucinations, 
and they are all of the auditory type. 

". . . Symphonic music aroused in me no 
image of the visual type while I remained the 
amateur that you knew from 1876 to 1898. When 
that amateur began to reflect methodically on the 

* See Part Three, Chapter IL 
Uhid., IV. 



APPENDICES. 351 

art of his taste, he recognized in music a power of 
suggesting : 

*'i. Sonorous, non-musical images — ^thunder, 
clock. Example, the overture of William Tell. 

"2. Psychic images — suggestion of a mental 
state — anger, love, religious feeling. 

"3. Visual images, whether following upon the 
psychic image or through the intermediation of a 
programme. 

*^Under what condition, in a symphonic work, is 
the visual image, introduced by the psychic image, 
produced? In the event of a break in the melodic 
web (see my Psychologic dans V Opera, pp. 119- 
120). Here are given, without orderly arrange- 
ment, some of the ideas that have come to me: 

"Beethoven's symphony in C major appears to me 
purely musical — it is of a sonorous design. The 
symphony in D major (the second) suggests to me 
visual-motor images — I set a ballet to the first part 
and keep track altogether of the ballet that I picture. 
The Heroic Symphony (aside from the funeral 
march, the meaning of which is indicated in the 
title) suggests to me images of a military character, 
ever since the time that I noticed that the funda- 
mental theme of the first portion is based on notes 
of perfect harmony — trumpet-notes and, by associa- 
tion, military. The finale of this symphony, which 
I consider superior to other parts, does not cause me 
to see anything. Symphony in B Hat major — I see 
nothing there — this may be said without qualifica- 
tion. Symphony in C minor — it is dramatic, al- 



352 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

though the melodic web is never broken. The first 
part suggests the image, not of Fate knocking at 
the gate, as Beethoven said, but of a soul overcome 
with the crises of revolt, accompanied by a hope of 
victory. Visual images do not come except as 
brought by psychic images." 

F. G., a musician, always sees — that is the rule, 
notably in the Pastoral, and in the Heroic Synv- 
phony. In Bach's Passion he beholds the scene of 
the mystic lamb. 

A composer writes me : "When I compose or 
play music of my own composition I behold dancing 
figures; I see an orchestra, an audience, etc. When 
I listen to or play music by another composer I do 
not see anything." This communication also men- 
tions three other musicians who see nothing. 

2. D , so little of a musician that I had 

some trouble to make him understand the term 
"symphonic music," never goes to concerts. How- 
ever, he went once, fifteen years ago, and there re- 
mains in his memory very clearly the principal 
phrase of a minuet (he hums it) — he cannot recall 
it without seeing people dancing a minuet. 

M. O. L has been kind enough to question 

in my behalf sixteen non-musical persons. Here 
are the results of his inquiry : 

Eight see curved lines. 

Three see images, figures springing in the air, 
fantastic designs. 

Two see the waves of the ocean. 

Three do not see anything. 



APPENDIX E 

The Imaginative Type and Association of 
Ideas^ 

I have questioned a very great number of imagi- 
native persons, well known to me as such, and have 
chosen preferably those who, not making a profes- 
sion of creating, let their fancy wander as it wills, 
without professional care. In all the mechanism is 
the same, differing scarcely more than temperament 
and degree of culture. Here are two examples. 

B , forty-six years of age, is acquainted 

with a large part of Europe, North America, 
Oceania, Hindoostan, Indo-China, and North 
Africa, and has not passed through these countries 
on the run, but, because of his duties, resided there 
some time. It is worthy of remark, as will be seen 
from the following observation, that the remem- 
brance of such various countries does not have first 
place in this brilliant, fanciful personage — which 
fact is an argument in favor of the very personal 
character of the creative imagination. 

*Tn a general way, imagination, very lively in 

^ See Conclusion, II, above. 



354 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

me, functions by association of ideas. Memory or 
the outer world furnishes me some data. On this 
data there is not always, though there should be, 
imaginative work proper, and then things remain 
as they are, without end. 

"But when I meet a construction — it matters little 
whether ancient or in the course of erection — the 
formula, *That ought to be fixed,* is one that rises 
mechanically to my mind in such a case; often it 
happens that I think aloud and say it, although 
alone. When going away from the architectural 
subject^ under consideration, I make up infinite 
variations upon it, one after another. Sometimes 
the things start from a reflex. . . ." 

After having noted his preference for the archi- 
tecture of the Middle Ages, B adds (here he 

touches on the unconscious factor) : 

"Were I to explain or attempt to explain how the 
Middle Ages have such an attraction for my mind, 
I should see therein an atavistic accumulation of 
religious feeling fixed in my family, on the female 
side no doubt, and of religiousness in ecclesiastical 
architecture — these touch. 

"Another example illustrating the role of asso- 
ciation of ideas in the same matter. One Sunday 
night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr. F. . . . . . 

who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from 
there. At the moment of our arrival the doctor 
asked what time it was. *Half-past two,' I said, 
looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent- 

'^ B . . . is not an architect. 



APPENDICES. 355 

court in front of the chapel I heard the lusty conclu- 
sion of a psalm. They are singing vespers/ I 
remarked to the doctor. He commenced to laugh. 
'What time are vespers sung in your town?* *At 
half-past two/ I answered. I opened the chapel 
door in order to show the doctor that vespers had 
just been held : the chapel was vacant. As I stood 
there, somewhat non-plussed, the doctor remarked, 
'Cerebral automatism.' 

"I may add here, by association of ideas. The 
doctor had seen through me, and had with fine 
insight perceived why I had heard the end of the 
psalm. The incident made a great impression on 
me, all the more as ever since the age of eight my 
memory testifies to a like hallucination, but of sight 

in place of hearing. It was at L that on 

Good Friday they rang at the cathedral with all 
their might. It was the very moment before the 
bells remain silent for three days, and it is known 
that this silence, ordained in the liturgy, is ex- 
plained to children by telling them that during these 
two days the bells have flown to Rome. Naturally 
I was treated to this little tale, and as they finished 
telling it, I saw a bell flying at an angle that I 
could still describe. 

"But this transforming power of my imagination 
is not present in me to the same extent as regards 
all things. It is much more operative in relation to 
Romano-Gothic architecture, mystic literature, and 
sociological knowledge than in relation, for in- 
stance, to my memories of travels. When I see 



356 THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

again, in the mind's eye, the Isle of Bourbon, 
Niagara, Tahiti, Calcutta, Melbourne, the Pyramids 
and the Sphinx, the graphic representation is intel- 
lectually perfect. The objects live again in all their 
external surroundings. I feel the Khamsinn, the 
desert wind that scorched me at the foot of Pom- 
pey's Column ; I hear the sea breaking into foam on 
the barrier reef of Tahiti. But the image does not 
lead to evocation of related or parallel ideas. 

*'When, on the other hand, I take a walk over 
the Comburg moor, the castle weighs upon me in all 
its massiveness; the recollections of the Memoires 
d'Ontre-tomhe besiege me like living pictures. I 
see, like Chateaubriand himself, the family of great 
famished lords in their feudal castle. With Cha- 
teaubriand I return in the twinkling of an eye to the 
Niagara that we have both seen. In the fall of the 
waters I find the deep and melancholy note that he 
himself found; and after that I think of that dark 
cathedral of Dol that evidently suggested to the 
author his Genie du Christianisme. 

"In literature, things are very unequally sugges- 
tive to me. Classic literature has only few paths 
outwards for me — Tacitus, Lucretius, Juvenal, 
Homer, and Saint-Simon excepted. I read the 
other authors of this class partly for themselves, 
without making a comparison. On the other hand, 
the reading of Dante, Shakespeare, St. Jerome's 
compact verses on the Hebrew, and Middle Age 
prose excites within me a whole world of ideas, like 
Wagner's music, canfo-fermo, and Beethoven. Cer- 



APPENDICES. 357 

tain things form a link for me from one order of 
ideas to another. For example, Michaelangelo and 
the Bible, Rembrandt and Balzac, Puvis de Cha- 
vannes and the Merovingian narratives. 

"To sum up: There are in me certain milieux 
especially favorable to imagination. When any cir- 
cumstance brings me into one of them, it is rare that 
an imaginative network does not occur; and, if one 
is produced, association of ideas will perform the 
work. When I give myself up to serious work, I 
have to mistrust myself: and in this connection I 
shall surprise people when I say that in the class of 
ideas above indicated the subject exciting the most 
ideas in me is sociology." 

M , sixty years of age, artistic tempera- 
ment. Because of the necessities of life, he has 
followed a profession entirely opposite to his bent. 
He has given me his "confession" in the form of 
fragmentary notes made day by day. Many are 
moral remarks on the subject of his imagination — 
I leave them out. I note especially the unconquer- 
able tendency to make up little romances and some 
details in regard to visual representation, and a 
dislike for numbers. 

"It happens that I experience sharp regret when I 
see the photograph of a monument, e. g., the Pan- 
theon, the proportions of which I have constructed 
according to the descriptions of the monument and 
the idea that I had of the life of the Greeks. The 
photograph mars my dream. 

"From the seen to the unknown. In the S. G. 



35? THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 

library. A slender young woman, smartly dressed 
— spotless black gloves — between her fingers a small 
pencil and a tiny note-book. What business has this 
affectation this morning in a classic and dull build- 
ing, in a common environment of poor workmen? 
She is not a servant-maid, and not a teacher. Now 
for the solution of the unknown. I follow the 
woman to her family, into her home, and it is quite 
a task. 

"In the same library. I want to get an address 
from the Almanack Bottin. A young man, perhaps 
a student, has borrowed the ridiculous volume. 
Bent over it, his hands in his hair, he turns the 
leaves with the sage leisure of a scholar looking for 
a commentary. From the empty dictionary he often 
draws out a letter. He must have received this 
letter this morning from the country. His family 
advises him to apply to so-and-so. It is a question 
of money and employment. He must locate the 
people who, provincial ignorance said, are near him. 
And so goes the wandering imagination. 

"When I feel myself drawn to anyone, I prefer 
seeing images or portraits rather than the reality. 
That is how I avoid making unforeseen discoveries 
that would spoil my model. 

"If I make numerical calculations, in the absence 
of concrete factors, the imagination goes afield, and 
the figures group themselves mechanically, barken- 
ing to an inner voice that arranges them in order to 
get the sense. 

"There may be an imagination devoted to arith- 



APPENDICES. 359 

metical calculations — forms, beings intrude, even 
the outline of the figure 3, for example; and then 
the addition or any other calculation is ruined. 

"I revert to the impossibility of making an addi- 
tion without a swerve of imagination, because 
plastic figures are always ready before the calcu- 
lator. The man of imagination is always construct- 
ing by means of plastic images.^ Life possesses 
him, intoxicates him, so he never gets tired." 

* We see that the speaker is a visualizer. 

THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX. 



Absent images, Association of, 94. 

Abstraction, 15; Late appearance 
of, 146. 

Abulics, II. 

Activity, normal end of imagina- 
tion, II. 

Adaptation of means to end, 264. 

Advance plans in commerce, 288. 

Adventure, Eras of, 287. 

Affective states. Role of, 8. 

Alcoholic liquors, 74. 

Alembert, d', 87. 

Alexander, 138, 142, 143. 

Alfieri, 56. 

Allen, 150. 

Americans, change occupations, 
257. 

Analogy, 299; Abuse of, 305; 
based on qualitative resem- 
blance, 26; essential to crea- 
tive imagination, 25; not trust- 
worthy in science, 27; Role of, 
in primitive life, 125; Thinking 
by, 117. 

Anatomical conditions, 65. 

Anger, 34. 

Animal fancy, 97. 

Animals, Association fibers or 
centers, lacking in, 100; Dis- 
coveries of, 98; Imagination in, 
93,94; Usefulness of, to man, 
274. 

Animism, 107, 189; of primitives, 
123. 

Anticipations of later inventions, 
277. 

Apollo, so. 

Apperception, Importance of, 16. 



Apprehensio simplex, a logical 

figment, no. 
Arago, 145. 
Aristotle, vi, 134, 141. 
Art, Indefiniteness of modern, 

203; Realistic, 250; Various 

theories of, 46. 
Artificial motors. Use of, a late 

development, 275. 
Aryan race, 129. 
Association, 22, 23; Forms of, 196; 

Laws of, 22; of ideas, 59, 353; 

of ideas. Criticism of the term, 

2z; of ideas. Discovery depends 

on, 250; suggests cause, 261. 
Associational systems, 67. 
Astral influences, 261. 
Asyllogistic deduction, 283. 
Attention, 86. 
Australians, 285. 
Automatisms, 71. 
Azam, 325. 

Bach, 69, 214, 216. 
Bacon, Roger, 245, 303 n. 
Baillarger, Dr., 324. 
Baldwin, 104. 
Barter, 286. 
Baudelaire, 39, 55. 
Beethoven, 52, 71, 148, 218. 
Bernard, Claude, 52; idee direc- 

trice of, 250. 
Binet, 340. 

Bipartite division of the brain, 67. 
Bismarck, 271. 
Blood circulation. Importance of, 

70. 
Boehme, Jacob, 335. 



3^4 



THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 



Bonnal, 298 n. 

Borgia, Lucretia,i39. 

Bossuet, 225. 

Boulogne, De, 283. 

Bourdeau, L., 272. 

Brain- development and abstrac- 
tion, 100; regions. Development 
of, 67; weights, 66. 

Bramwell, 343. 

Ereguet, 2"}^. 

Brown-Sequard, tj. 

Buddha, Life of, 301. 

Buffon, 52, Ti. 

Byron, 145. 

Cabalists, 234. 

Cabalistic mysticism, 226. 

Cabanis, 78. 

Campanella, 303. 

Carlyle, 150, 186. 

Carpenter, 284, 339. 

Carthage, 282. 

Categories of images, 16. 

Causality, Search for, 260. 

Charcot, 6. 

Charlemagne, 138. 

Chateaubriand, 76. 

Chatterton, 145. 

Cherubini, 145. 

Child, Adult misinterpretation of, 
104; Creative imagination in 
the, 103 ff. ; Exaggeration of 
his intelligence, 115; Oscilla- 
tion of belief and doubt in the, 
113; Stages of development, 105. 

Child-study, Difficulties of, 104. 

Chopin, 52, 215. 

Chorea, loi. 

Cid, The, 140. 

Classes of discoverers, 249. 

Classification, 181. 

Coleridge, Z7- 

Colored hearing, 38. 

Columbus, Christopher, 89. 

Commerce, Combative element in, 
295- 

Commercial imagination. Condi- 
tions of, 281; development due 
to increasing substitution, 287; 
development, Stages of, 285. 

Common factor in comparison, 40. 



Complementary scientists, 246. 

Complete images impossible, 16. 

Comte, 146. 

Condillac, 243. 

Confucius, 300. 

Confusion of impressions, 18. 

Conjecture, beginning of science, 
245- 

Conscious imagination, a special 
case, 58. 

Constellation, 59, 126. 

Constitutions by philosophers, 309. 

Contiguity and resemblance, 24. 

Contrapuntists, 214. 

Contrast, Association by, 40. 

Cooperation, 309; of intellect and 
feeling, 43. 

Copernicus, 246. 

Counter-world, 304. 

Creation hindered by complete 
redintegration, 22; in physio- 
logical inhibition, 6; Motor basis 
of, 258; Physiological and im- 
aginative, 76; versus repetition, 
5- 

Creative imagination, a growth, 9; 
Composite character of, 12; con- 
ditioned by knowledge, 173; 
either esthetic or practical, 44; 
implies feeling, jt^; Neglect of, 
by writers on psychology, vii; 
Reasons for, 313. 

Creative instinct, non-existent, 42. 

Crisis, not essential, 58. 

Critical stage of investigation, 

. 252. 

Cromwell, 144. 

Cumulative inventions, 2^2. 

Curiosity, 99; of primitive man, 
45. 131- 

Cuvier, 183. 

Daedalus, 269. 

Dante, 205. 

Darwin, 117, 346. 

Dauriac, 350. 

Deduction, Process of, 283. 

Deffant, Madame du, 48. 

Deities, Coalescence of, 200; Mo- 
mentary, 199; Multiplicity of 
Roman, 125. 



INDEX. 



365 



Delboef, 342. 

DeQuincy, 55. 

Descartes, j^ii 294. 

Determinism, Neglect of, by ideal- 
ists, 303; of art, 278; of inven- 
tion, 264. 

Dewey, John, 132 n. 

Dialectic, Hegelian, 254. 

Diffluent imagination, 196 ff. 

Dii minores, 269. 

Disinterestedness of the artist, 35. 

Dissociation, 15, 268; by concom- 
itant variations, 21; of series, 
19. 

Double personality, 325. 

Dreams, 38; Emotional persist- 
ence of, 324. 

Drugs, Effect of, 55; Use of, as 
excitants, 70. 

Dualism of Fourier, 306. 

Diirer, 145. 

Egypt, 135- 

Egyptian conception of causality, 
260. 

Emotion, and sensation, 38; mate- 
rial for imagination, ZZ\ Pre- 
supposes unsatisfied needs, 2,^; 
Realization of, 80. 

Emotional abstraction, 196; fac- 
tor, 31 ff. 

Empedocles, 136. 

Epic, Rise of the, 138. 

Essenes, 307. 

Esthetic imagination, contrasted to 
mechanical, 264; Fixity of, 264. 

Ethics, Living and dead, 302. 

Euclid, 244, 245. 

Eureka, Moment of, 247, 302. 

Evolution of commerce, Law's 
statement of, 294. 

Exact knowledge requisite in com- 
merce, 289. 

Expansion of self, 314. 

Experience requisite for literary 
invention, 146. 

External factors, 21. 

P'acts and general ideas, 252. 
Faith, 112; -cure, 6; highest in 
semi-science, 241 ; Role of, 7. 



Fancy, 346; in animals, 97; 

Source of, 260. 
Fear, 34. 
Fenelon, 303. 
Fere, 325, 340. 
Fiduciary money, 286. 
Fixed ideas, 88, 89. 
Flechsig, d"], 68, 100, 103. 
Flournoy, 38, 344. 
Forel, 96. 
Fouillee, 193. 
Fourier, 304. 
French, not strong in imagination, 

193; Revolution, 151. 
Fresnel, 145. 
Fromentin, 17. 
Froschammer, 75, 346. 
Fuegians, 285. 

Gauss, 69, 183. 

Gautier, Theophile, 55, 189, 190. 

Gavarni, 187. 

Generic image, 18. 

Genius, and brain structure, 68; 
depends on subliminal imagina- 
tion, 57; exceptional, 149; No 
common measure of, 143. 

Geniuses, of judgment, 142; of 
mastery over men, and matter, 
142. 

Gilman, 219 n. 

Gnostics, 234. 

Goethe, 29, 149, 150, 216. 

Gold, Curative powers of, 261. 

Goncourt, 74. 

Goya, 39, 206. 

Greece, 282. 

Greek republics, 151. 

Gretry, JZ- 

Grillparzer, 85, 336. 

Groos, 35, 47, 99, 22T. 

Guericke, Otto de, 276. 

Habits, 22. 
Hamilton, 19, 58, 60. 
Handel, 145. 
Hanseatic League, 287. 
Harrington, 303. 
Hartmann, 254, 346. 
Haiiy, 247. 
Haydn, 145. 



366 



THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 



Hegel, 254, 346. 

Heine, 306. 

Hellenic imagination, anthropo- 
morphic, 202. 

Helmholtz, 20, 87, 142. 

Henry IV, 139. 

Hephaestos, 269. 

Hercules, 137. 

Hero, 270. 

Herodotus, 260. 

Hesiod, 130. 

Hindoo imagination, symbolic, 
202. 

Hindoos, 128. 

Hodgson, 35. 

Hoffding, 41. 

Hoffman, 39, 206. 

Homo duplex, 43. 

Homonomy, 120. 

Howe, 60 n. 

Huber, 96. 

Hugo, Victor, 188, 189, 216, 229; 
Animism in, 189. 

Human force, beginning of inven- 
tion, 273. 

Hume, III. 

Huyghens, 270. 

Hyperaemia, 70. 

Hyperesthesia, Temporary, 74. 

Hypermncsia, 54. 

Hypothesis, 251; Progressive, 244. 

Icarus, 269. 

Idea and emotion. Equivalence of, 
80. 

Ideal modified in practice, 306. 

Idealistic conceptions, 300. 

Idealization, Process of, 138. 

Illusion, 107; and legend, 137; 
Conscious, of mystic, 228. 

Illusions, valuable to scientist, 
251. 

Image, Modification of, 18, 291. 

Images, 80; abbreviations of real- 
ity, 232; Categories of, 16; 
Concrete, 222; provoked, 188; 
sketched type, 81; Symbolic, 
222; Visual, provoked by music, 
217. 

Imagination, and abulia, 11; and 
foresight, 284; anthropocentric. 



10; basis of the cosmic process, 
75 ; Commercial, 281; complete 
in animals, 95; condensed in 
common objects, 276; Condi- 
tions of, 44; Development of, 
167 ff.; Diffluent, 196 ff.; Es- 
thetic, 264; fixed form, 318; in 
animals, 93; in experimentation, 
248; in primitive man, 118; 
Mechanical and technical, 257; 
Motives of different sorts of, 
251; Musical, 212 ff., 350; 
Mystic, 221 ff.; Mystical, differ- 
ent from religious, 231; not op- 
posed to the useful, 263; Nu- 
merical, 207 ff.; Periods of de- 
velopment of, 144; Plastic, 184 
ff.; Poetical, 267; Practical, 256 
ff. ; present in all activities, viii; 
Quality of, same in many lives, 
265; Scientific, 236 ff. ; sketched 
form, 316; substitute for rea- 
son, 29; Varieties of, 180. 

Imaginative type, 320. 

Imitation, through pleasure, 98. 

Imitative music, 214. 

Impersonality, 52, 86. 

Incomplete images, 18. 

Incubation, Periods of, 278. 

Individual variations, 179. 

Individuality of genius, 149. 

Inductive reasoning, 132, 

Infantile insanity, loi. 

Inhibition by representation, 6. 

Initial moment of discovery, 276. 

Inspiration, 50, 85; and intoxica- 
tion, 55; Characteristic of, 57; 
characterized by suddenness and 
impersonality, 51; resembles 
somnambulism, 56; Subjective 
feeling of, untrustworthy, 59. 

Instinct, 75; answer to specific 
needs, 42; Creative, 313; Re- 
semblance of invention to, 48. 

Intellectual factor, 15. 

Intuition, 282, 285. 

Introspectors, 321. 

Intentional combination of im- 
ages, 95. 

Interest, a factor in creation, 82. 

Interesting, defined, 36. 



INDEX. 



367 



Invention arises to satisfy a need, 
271; Higher forms of, 140 ff.; 
in morals, 300; in successive 
parts, 296; of monopolies, 282; 
Pain of, 51; Spontaneity of, 51; 
subjected to tradition, 269. 

Inventions, Amplifiers of, 270; 
largely anonymous, 275; Me- 
chanical, neglected by psycholo- 
gists, 263; Stratification of, 2']2. 

Inventors deified, 269; Oddities 
of, ^2. 

James, William, 21, 25, n, 83, 112. 

Janet, 340. 

Jealousy, stimulates imagination, 

34- 
Jordsens, 145. 
Joy, 34- 

Kant, 248. 
Kepler, 246, 247. 
Klopstock, 215. 
Klihn, 129. 

Lagrange, 71. 

Lammennais, JZ- 

Lang, 128, 261. 

Language, Origin of, 120. 

Laplace, 250. 

Larvated epilepsy, 141. 

Lavoisier, 246. 

Law, 294. 

Lazarus, 47. 

Leibniz, "jz^ 74, 146, 253, 296 n. 

Lelut, 141. 

Leurechon, 2TT. 

Liebig, 244. 

Linnaeus, 183. 

Literal mysticism, 226. 

Localization, 65. 

Loch Lomond, 58. 

Locke, 309. 

Lombroso, 141, 142. 

Louis XIV, 150. 

Love, 34; and hate, 134. 

Love-plays, 99. 

Machiavelli, tz- 

Machines, counterfeits of human 
beings, 279. 



Man and animals. Specific quality 

of, 2'JZ. 

Manu, 300. 

Mastery, Spirit of, 114. 

Materials of imagination, 299. 

Maury, A., 6 n. 

Mechanic and poet, 279. 

Mechanical aptitude, 145. 

Mechanical imagination, Ideal of, 
268. 

Mediate association, 59. 

Memory, Predominant tendencies 
in, 61; untrustworthy, 17. 

Men, Great, as makers of history, 
ISO. 

Mendelssohn, 145, 213 n., 215, 
216. 

Mental chemistry, 82. 

Merchant sailors, 282. 

Metamorphosis, 28; of deities, 
129; Regressive, 171. 

Metaphysical speculation, 251; 
thought, Stages of, 252. 

Metaphysics, 252 ff. 

Methods of invention, 243. 

Meynert, 100. 

Michelangelo, 145, 148, 149. 

Michelet, 186, 306. 

Middle Ages, predominantly im- 
aginative, 174. 

Military invention, 295; Condi- 
tions of, 297. 

Mill, John Stuart, 82, 284. 

Milton, Tz- 

Mimicry, 98. 

Mind, Varieties of, 320. 

Mission, Consciousness of, 148. 

Misunderstanding of the new, 151. 

Mobility of inventors, 258. 

Monadology, 253. 

Money, Invention of, 286; sought 
as an end, 289. 

Monge, 2Z7. 

Moses, 300. 

]More, 303, 309. 

Morgan, Lloyd, 99. 

Mormons, 307. 

Monoideism, 87. 

Montgolfier, ZTJ. 

Moral geniuses, 301. 

Moravian brotherhood, 307. 



368 



THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 



Mosso, 71, 340. 

Motor elements in all representa- 
tion, 4; elements, Role of, 7; 
manifestation basis of creation, 
9. 

Movements, Importance of, in 
imagination, 3. 

Mozart, 73, 145. 

Muller, Max, 120, 129, 130, 

Mummy powder, 261. 

Miinsterberg, 60. 

Muses, 50. 

Music an emotional language, 220; 
Precocity in, 144. 

Musical imagination, 212, 350. 

Musset, Alfred de, 335. 

Myers, 342. 

Mystic imagination, 221 flf., 335. 

Mystics, Abuse of allegory, by, 225; 
Belief of, 227; Metaphorical 
style of, 224. 

Mysticism by suggestion, 229. 

Myth, defined, 123; Depersonifica- 
tion of, 133; in Plato, 134; in 
science, 134; Subjective and ob- 
jective factors in, 122. 

Myths, Significance of, 119; Vari- 
ations in, 127. 

Myth-making activity, viii, 331. 



Napoleon, 10, 66, 71, 142; his war 
practice, 298. 

Natural, and human phenomena, 
299; law, Uniformity of, op- 
posed to dissociation, 2 1 ; mo- 
tors. Use of, 275. 

Naville, 245. 

Need of knowing, 314. 

Neglect of details in sensation, 
20. 

Nerval, Gerard de, 229, 324. 

Nervous overflow, 71. 

New Larnak, 309. 

Newbold, 340. 

Newcomen, 270. 

Newton, 58, 87, 146. 

Nietzsche, 150. 

Nomina Numina, 120, 262. 

Nordau, 142. 

Numerical imagination, 207 ff.; 



mysticism, 226 ; series unlimited, 
207. 

Objective study of inventors, 71. 

Oddities of inventors, 72. 

Oelzelt-Newin, 33, 95. 

Old age, Effect of, on imagina- 
tion, 77. 

Organic conditions, 65. 

Orientation conditioned by indi- 
vidual organization, 48; Per- 
sonal, 270. 

Owen, Robert, 309. 

Paradox of belief, 242. 

Paralysis by ideas, 6. 

Pascal, 146, 244. 

Pasteur, 142, 143, 251. 

Pathological view of genius, 741, 

Pathology and physiology, 74. 

Perception, 15; and conception, 
184; and imagination, 106. 

Perez, B., 115. 

Persistence of ideas due to feel- 
ing, 79- 

Personification, 186; characteristic 
of aborigines and children, 27; 
source of myth, 28. 

Phalanges, Organization of soci- 
ety into, 305. 

Philippe, J., 17 n. 

Philosophy, a transformation of 
mystic ideas, 233. 

Phlogiston, 248. 

Physiological states, 70. 

Physiology and pathology, 74. 

Plastic art and mythology, 191; 
imagination, 184 f. 

Plato, 134, 303, 309. 

Platonic ideas, 81, 253. 

Play, 47, 97; Uses of, for man, 
114. 

Plotinus, 234, 

Poe, 39, 206, 324. 

Poet, a workman, 190. 

Poetical imagination, general char- 
acters, 267; Inspiration in, 268; 
special characters, 270. 

Poetical invention, Stages of, 266. 

Polyideism, 87. 

Polynomy, 120. 



INDEX. 



369 



Poncelet, 143. 

Positive minds, 318. 

Powers of nature, Exploitation of 
271. 

Practical imagination, Ubiquity 
of, 254. 

Practice, essential in motor crea- 
tion, 186. 

Precocity, 144; in poetry, 145; of 
mathematicians, 147. 

Pre-Raphaelites, 204. 

Preyer, 117. 

Primitive man, 45; and myth, 
1 1.8 ff. 

Principle of unity, 250. 

Progressive stages of imagination, 
84. 

Prometheus, 269. 

Provoked revival, 94. 

Pseudo-science, 240. 

Psychic atoms, 19; paralysis, 6. 

Psychological regressions, 248. 

Puberty, Influence of, on imagi- 
nation, 76. 

Pythagoras, 226, 246. 

Pythagoreans, 134. 

Qualities, Attribution of, to ob- 
jects, 124. 

Raphael, 145. 

Rational Metaphysics, 254. 

Reason, Objectivity of, 10. 

Reciprocal working of scientific 
and practical discoveries, 249. 

Recuperative theory of play, 97. 

Redintegration, Law of, 19; To- 
tal, 36. 

Regis, 54. 

Religion, Universality of, 128. 

Renaissance, 151, 175. 

Reni, Guido, y^. 

Repetition versus creation, 5, 23. 

Representation and belief insepar- 
able, no. 

Representations, Interchange of, 
323; Number of, 322. 

Revery, 38, 198, 316. 

Reymond, Du Bois, 52. 

Reynolds, 6, 325. 

Roland, 138. 



Roman Republic, 151. 
Romans, 125. 
Romanes, 94, 95, 96. 
Romantic invention, 115. 
Rontgen, 142. 
Rossini, 73. 
Rousseau, 309. 
Rubens, 145. 
Riidinger, 69. 

Saint-Simonism, 309. 

Sand, George, 52, 215. 

Satanic literature, 206. 

Schelling, 253. 

Schematic images, 18, 291. 

Schiller, 47, 72, 73, 145, 

Schopenhauer, 37, 149, 150, 253, 
346. 

Schubert, 145. 

Schumann, 215. 

Science, 45; Conjecture beginning 
of, 245; prescribes conditions 
and limits to imagination, 236; 
Three movements in growth of, 
239- 

Scientific imagination, 236 ff. 

Scripture, 60. 

Self-feeling, 35. 

Semi-science, 240. 

Seneca, 141. 

Sensation changed in memory, 17. 

Sensorial insanity, 10 1. 

Sexual instinct, 314. 

Shakers, 307. 

Shakespeare, 143, 186. 

Shelly, 56. 

Social aims in finance, 294; in- 
vention, limited by- the past. 
308; wants, 314. 

Socialism, Utopian and scientific.. 
310. 

Societies for special ends, 307. 

Sorrow, 34. 

Special modes of scientific imag- 
ining, 2Z7. 

Specific, not general imagination, 
179. 

Spencer, 47, 131, 150. 

Spinoza, no, 143, 254. 

Spirits, Belief in, 51. 

Spontaneity, 296. 



370 



THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION. 



Spontaneous revival, 94, 315. 
Spontaneous variations, 140. 
Stages of passage from percept to 

concept, 292. 
Stallo, 134. 

State credit, Law's system of, 294. 
Stewart, Dugald, iii. 
Stigmata, etc., unprecedented in 

individual's experience, 7. 
Stigmatized individuals, 6. 
Subjective factors, 20. 
Subliminal imagination, 57. 
Sully, 21. 
Summa, 254. 
Summary, 330. 

Superstition and religion, 259. 
Symbolism of Hindoos, 202. 

Taine, 18, iii, 117, 129, 150, 200. 
Teleological character of will and 

imagination, 10. 
Thales, 134. 
Titchener, 83. 
Tolstoi, 151. 
Tools, 274. 

Tours, Moreau de, 55, 78, 141. 
Triptolemus, 269. 
Tropisms, 75. 
Tycho-Brahe, 73, 246, 270. 
Tylor, 99, 123, 125, 131, 139. 
Tyndall, 238. 
Tyre, 282. 

Unconscious, Nature of the, 339; 
physiological theory, 340, 341. 

Unconscious cerebration, 53; fac- 
tor, 50 fl. ; factor, not a distinct 
element in invention, 64. 

Units of exchange, 286. 

Unity, Principle of, 79. 

Universale post rem, 84. 

Utopias, based on author's mi- 
lieuj 303. 



Utopian imagination, 299. 
Utopians, indifferent to realiza- 
tion, 309. 

Van Dyck, 145. 

\'aucanson, 48. 

Vedic epoch, 129. 

Vesication, 5, 7. 

Vicavakarma, 269. 

Vico, 174. 

Vignoli, 128. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 58, 149. 

Vis a f route and a tergo, 11. 

\'ocation. Change of, 173; Choice 

of, 144. 
Voltaire, 150. 
Voluntary activity analogous to 

creative imagination, 9. 
Von Baer, 210. 
Von Hartmann, 224. 

Wagner, 145. 

Wahle, 62. 

Wallace, 96, 99. 

Wallaschek, 99. 

Watch, Evolution of the, 270. 

Watt, James, 66, 244, 270. 

Wealth, desired from artistic mo- 
tives, 290. 

Weber, E. F., 5, 145, 216. 

Weismann, 148. 

Wernicke, 100. 

Wiertz, 39, 206. 

Will, The broad meaning of, 112; 
a coordinating function, 9; Ef- 
fect of, on physiological func- 
tioning, 5. 

Words, Role of, 96. 

Wundt, 24, 40, 182. 

Zeller, 226. 
Ziehen, 61, 62. 
Zoroaster, 300. 



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